China tightens VPN regulation

    The government of the People's Republic of China has informed local providers and telecommunications companies about the need to block the illegal use of VPNs by private individuals. Companies operating in the country will be able to continue to use the services of officially registered providers of VPN services. / Flickr / Surian Soosay / CC These measures followed immediately after the regular blocking of more than 60 entertainment sites and profiles on social networks. In addition, the content of the Weibo Corp social service was partially limited , and the company announced its readiness for more active work with the state.





    At the end of June, it became known that GreenVPN and Haibei VPN, locally known VPN services, had already notified customers of the impossibility of providing the service and actually stopped working with Chinese users in early July.

    The Chinese VPN market continued to be gray for many years. Now he may lose his main audience or completely cease to exist.

    The latest initiative to tighten VPN regulation cannot fail to affect the activities of individuals, but does not provide for direct sanctions . Companies and their employees will be able to continue to use officially registered services.

    At the moment there is no explanation as to how things will be in case a person prefers to work from home or goes on a business trip

    Representatives of the scientific community, while maintaining anonymity, said that such regulation would affect the quality of research and the exchange of experience with colleagues from other countries. Many of them expressed dissatisfaction with the level of local services and search engines, talking about how they had to resort to using VPN services for many years in order to “keep up” with the international scientific community, read fresh scientific papers and communicate with colleagues in forbidden social networks and instant messengers.

    After the announcement of the suspension of GreenVPN and Haibei VPN, their foreign counterparts like KeepSolid VPN, VyprVPN, ExpressVPN and PureVPN announced an influx of users and emphasized that they did not see any problems working with the Chinese audience.

    And immediately they began to receive notifications, including from Apple, that the application would be removed from the Chinese "store window" of the Apple Store at the request of the authorities. Representatives of ExpressVPN and VyprVPN told The New York Times about this (by the way, the application of the publication itself was similarly hidden from the Chinese version of the Apple Store).

    UPD : BBC reporters wrote that Apple has already removed more than 60 applications on this topic from the Chinese version of the Apple Store.

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