New data unveils record-high government-directed Internet shutdowns, a rise in malicious traffic, and cyberattacks targeting the Gambling and Gaming industries
Cloudflare published its fifth annual Year in Review, exploring global Internet insights and security trends during 2024, accompanied by a deeper dive on the most popular Internet services.
The Internet is the cornerstone of global connection, providing access to the critical information and services that power our daily lives. This dependency on the Internet has made it the backbone of today’s society – from helping first responders save lives, allowing communities to connect with elected officials and register to vote or supporting global digital economies.
Cloudflare’s 2024 Year in Review underscores how every year, as more people and devices connect to the Internet, global traffic surges (up 17% YoY), generating new trends that showcase our global dependence on its capabilities.
“All of these interactions we often take for granted, behind the scenes, are connected to the Internet in one way or another, with a huge percentage running through Cloudflare’s network every second of every day.”
Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare.
“We rely on the Internet almost constantly, yet many still see it merely as a collection of web pages. But the Internet is everywhere, woven throughout almost all of the daily activities of modern life – how we interact and connect on social media, use our smart refrigerators and vacuums, travel from one place to another through rideshare apps, connect to our banks and more,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare. “All of these interactions we often take for granted, behind the scenes, are connected to the Internet in one way or another, with a huge percentage running through Cloudflare’s network every second of every day. And as one of the largest in the world, Cloudflare’s global network has an unmatched comprehensive view into usage, and overall quality and connectivity across the web.”
With its Year in Review report, Cloudflare aims to share key data insights about the changing Internet landscape to help keep the online world more informed, resilient and secure. Some of the biggest highlights of 2024 include:
- Most Popular Internet Service: Google came in first for the third year in a row, followed by Facebook (#2), Apple (#3) and TikTok (#4) – unchanged from 2023. However, WhatsApp broke into the top ten most popular services globally for the first time.
- Most Popular Generative AI Service: Codeium, Claude and CoPilot were new entrants to the top ten most popular generative AI services (#3, #5 and #7 respectively), while OpenAI held onto the number one position for the second year in a row.
- Most Popular Gaming Services: Gaming consumers drove Steam into the top five most popular services for the first time, while Minecraft entered the top ten this year. Meanwhile, Roblox ranked #1 for the fourth year in a row.
- Most Targeted Industry: Globally, the Gaming and Gambling industry became the top target for threat actors, overtaking the Finance sector, which was the most targeted category in 2023. Notably, threats increased largely in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl in the United States.
- Internet Outages Observed: Over half of all global Internet outages were a result of government directed shutdowns – often in response to protests, civil unrest or even to prevent cheating during exams – impacting countries like Mozambique, Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh, Senegal, Pakistan and others.
- Malicious Traffic: The Internet has not become significantly more dangerous over the past year, with about 6.5% of all global traffic mitigated as potentially malicious – only a slight increase from 2023.
- Most Aggressive AI Bots: AI bots and crawlers have been in the news for voraciously consuming content. But while Bytespider (ByteDance) and ClaudeBot (Anthropic) were the most active, both of their overall traffic gradually declined over the course of the year.
“Cloudflare Radar was launched in 2020 when we witnessed the drastic impact the pandemic had on the way we interact with the Internet, and the importance for those insights to be accessible to anyone,” said David Belson, Head of Data Insight at Cloudflare. “Our Year in Review is a part of Radar’s commitment to democratize Cloudflare’s data, offering a window into Internet trends and patterns for anyone to explore at their fingertips.”
