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Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

zdnet.com

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Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#11

Post by netsharc »

majia wrote: post #9
User23 wrote: post #6

The odds of a Chinese homed VPN provider not sharing logs with the Party asymptotically approach zero as time and user count increase.

Providing vpn services is almost illegal in china. The party doesnt ask for logs; it shuts down vpn services and punishes the providers. So the odds of vpn provider sharing logs with the government is ironically low.

Well... if "dissidents" use VPN that you ("Chinese government") can't monitor, what's one easy way to continue monitoring them?

Yes, offer them free VPN, what good is encryption if you're connected to a server they own/have influence over?

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#12

Post by [deleted] »

forkLding wrote: post #3

Likely the reason why a lot of VPN apps are Chinese is because there is an actual demand for VPN usage in China. You then multiply that with the population size (19% of the world is Chinese or roughly 1 in 5 people in this world) and you will have a massive market to grow for local Chinese VPN developers and for them to prosper. The article author sounds surprised but it is quite logical if you think about it.

[deleted]

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#13

Post by majia »

netsharc wrote: post #11
majia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing vpn services is almost illegal in china. The party doesnt ask for logs; it shuts down vpn services and punishes the providers. So the odds of vpn provider sharing logs with the government is ironically low.

Well... if "dissidents" use VPN that you ("Chinese government") can't monitor, what's one easy way to continue monitoring them? Yes, offer them free VPN, what good is encryption if you're connected to a server they own/have influence over?

The party doesn’t need to offer them free vpn. Instead, it figures out what vpn services they are using and shuts them down. It goes as far as using machine learning to detect vpn traffic.

I guess this is more effective because dissents is a very small subset of vpn users, and application layer encryption makes it hard to extract much information even if you can monitor vpn traffic.

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#14

Post by echevil »

duxup wrote: post #10

Is there any reason to trust a free VPN service? At least with a paid service I might think that my money ... could be enough to sustain the company. At least it could be. I would assume a free service would have to be selling your information just as a matter of policy / economics.

There is usually a free version and a paid version for better speed.

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#15

Post by echevil »

tehlike wrote: post #7
userbinator wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised, because the Chinese also have the most need for a VPN. Contrary to the article I think them "trying to keep a low profile" is not a bad sign at all, and you shouldn't really need to worry about privacy if you're using end-to-end encryption through the VPN.

Except if the phone itself contains an exploit.

Privacy is not a big concern for the Chinese based VPN services. It’s useful for both accessing websites blocked inside China, and also Chinese content blocked outside China

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#16

Post by echevil »

tehlike wrote: post #5

Almost all of the utility apps (battery cleaners, ram optimizers etc) are owned by chinese, and they are a bigger threat than vpn services. They have a huge footprint of devices outside of china, and have a lot of permissions granted

Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. VPN is useful in both direction. There are quite some Chinese content not accessible outside China.

Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership

#17

Post by echevil »

User23 wrote: post #6

The odds of a Chinese homed VPN provider not sharing logs with the Party asymptotically approach zero as time and user count increase.

Given the scale of VPN usage in China, it’s unlikely the party could do anything about it even if it got access to some logs. Vast majority of the users of these services inside China are most likely very educated group of people, like academia, software engineers, scientists etc. Large tech companies usually have some way for their employees to access banned websites in China, but mostly just for accessing tech related information. It’s just yet another gray area
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