Many major and popular VPN apps have been confirmed to be removed on China’s Apple App Store, which is to comply with the country’s law.
China has always been a country censors the Internet within the country, including preventing the citizens from access to the famous websites like Google, and social platforms like Facebook and twitter. However, many people would choose to use the Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) apps as a means to access to the websites banned by the government. And now, there is another big move of the country: it requires Apple to purge those VPN apps which violate the country’s online censorship, and Apple finally comply.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been confirm about this change and remove many VPN apps in China late last week, although many people criticized this move, Apple finally have to abide by the regulations and take out those VPNs. And Tim Cook responded to criticisms that
“The central government in China back in 2015 started tightening the regulations associated with VPN apps, and we have a number of those on our store … Earlier this year, they began a renewed effort to enforce that policy, and we were required by the government to remove some of the VPN apps from the App Store that don’t meet these new regulations.”
Many famous VPN companies like ExpressVPN and Star VPN feel disappointed about the decision of being removed from China’s App Store, and it will be also a big problem for the people in mainland to access many websites in other countries.
More reading: Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship – The New York Times.
