Chinese man gets nine months in prison for selling VPNs
A Chinese man who sold VPN software through his own website has been sentenced to nine months in prison by a Chinese court. The verdict was already imposed at the beginning of this year, but has only now come out.
The seller was arrested on suspicion of supplying resources for the ‘illegal control of computers’. The court ruled that the man has violated Chinese criminal law by selling software that allows people to access foreign websites that normally cannot be visited with a Chinese IP address. TorrentFreak reports this on the basis of a weblog that writes a lot about Chinese developments in the online field. The specific article of law that the man allegedly violated prohibits, among other things, breaking into computer systems.
China has been working for some time to get more grip on the internet, with VPNs being a specific target. For example, in January the Chinese government launched a campaign to ban VPN services that have not been authorized by the authorities. All vpn services in China require government approval to operate in the country. Companies have been warned to only allow the use of VPN connections for internal use.
In early 2015, it became clear that China had blocked three VPN networks from providers Astrill, StrongVPN and Golden Frog, and on July 1, 2017, a VPN service called GreenVPN stopped offering the connections, reportedly due to pressure from Chinese regulators. The Chinese government wants to limit the use of VPN connections as much as possible, because this can circumvent Chinese internet censorship, also known as The Great Firewall of China.
Based on the stricter rules regarding VPNs, it turned out at the end of July that Apple had removed all VPN software from the Chinese version of the App Store. According to Apple, this was done because the connections are no longer allowed in China. Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasized in an explanation that Apple would rather not have removed the VPN apps, but that the company had no other choice, because it says it adheres to the law in all countries in which it operates.