China orders mobile app stores to remove VPN apps
China's notorious Great Firewall makes it difficult — but not impossible — for Chinese netizens to access sites like Twitter, Facebook, western news outlets like the New York Times, and thousands of other websites, not to mention Global Voices.
For years, netizens in China (and other countries with heavy restrictions on Internet content) have used virtual private networks (VPNs) that allow them to circumvent censorship by creating a secure and well-hidden connection to another network in a different geographic location.
But their days using VPNs may be numbered.
Netizens are anticipating that the majority of VPN apps serving individuals’ needs will be taken down from Apple and Android App markets by 1 July 2017.
Whisperings of a state ban on unauthorized VPNs spread widely on Twitter and Weibo after the popular VPN service provider Green announced that the company would cease operations by 1 July. Below is the company’s letter to its customers, dated 22 June:
Dear respected Green customers,
We have received notice from the higher authorities. We regret to inform you that Green will cease our service on July 1st, 2017. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
We will start processing our users’ refund request after service stopped (the amount will be calculated based on the remaining days in your plan). If you need a refund, please make sure to submit your refund request by August 31, 2017. We won’t be able to process any refund request submitted after that date. Since the workload of processing the requests, information verification and money transfer would be huge, we won’t be able to set an exact date for the refund. We plan to process the refund soon after August 31, please wait patiently.
Your praise and affirmation have encouraged us to last as long as we have. We will always be grateful for this. In the future, the Green team will transform the business. We look forward to meeting you again.
Green is just one of the VPNs that appears to be facing a mandatory shutdown. VPN providers including Netfits, VPN Master Pro, Ponhon, Snap VPN, SkyX, among others have disappeared from Apple and Android app stores over the past few months.
While some companies offering these services are banned or disrupted in China, others are fully licensed to operate. It has been estimated that 1-3% of China's internet users use circumvention tool to visit overseas websites.
People who follow the news closely might have anticipated the coming of a full VPN ban. In January 2017, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that it would ban “illegal services” that carry out cross-border operations, including unauthorized virtual private networks (VPNs), until March 2018.
Yet July 2017 is eight months ahead of March 2018, and state authorities have made no official announcement of the ban being expedited.
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