Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
1–10 of 66 posts
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#2I'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.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#3Likely 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.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#4Likely 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.
This is not entirely true. Some, if not all, of these companies start outside of china, but end up getting bought by chinese capital. I do not have a source for this, i just know from my chat with friends.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#5Almost 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
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#6The odds of a Chinese homed VPN provider not sharing logs with the Party asymptotically approach zero as time and user count increase.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#7I'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.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#8Likely 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.
This is not entirely true. Some, if not all, of these companies start outside of china, but end up getting bought by chinese capital. I do not have a source for this, i just know from my chat with friends.
It works both way. I used to use a shadowsocks based service called "God Use VPN" or 佛跳墙 in Chinese, which is a dish name. It was so popular to the extend that google translation used to believe that the English name of that Chinese dish known as "佛跳墙" is "God Use VPN".
It was recently sold to a foreign owner and stopped provided any Chinese based services - if you send them some emails in Chinese, you get English responses. Pretty clear sign that they quit the Chinese market for whatever reason.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#9The 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.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#10Is 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.