China’s Great Firewall gets tougher to scale as popular VPN shut down
Virtual private network GreenVPN tells customers it received order from regulators to cease operations
Getting around the Great Firewall, the system used by China to control internet access, just got harder with a popular virtual private network forced to cease operating on orders from the government.
GreenVPN sent a notice to customers that it would halt its service from Saturday (July 1) after “receiving a notice from regulatory departments”, without elaborating on those demands.
VPNs work by routing internet traffic to servers in other locations, such as the United States, that are beyond the reach of Chinese filters.
They are popular in China because the government limits access to a raft of content, from news and video to politics and pornography that it deems to be undesirable. For many internet users, services that enable them to bypass the Great Firewall are the only way to access Facebook, Twitter and the websites of the New York Times. Long a legal grey area, VPNs are commonly used by businesses, universities and news organisations – including state-run newspapers – in China.
On Saturday, some users of GreenVPN on iPhones reported that it failed to load, with the timing coming on the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China.
