Two top VPNs just pulled out of Hong Kong — here's why
Two meridian VPNs just pulled out of Hong Kong — here'due south why
UPDATED with comment from ExpressVPN.
Two major N American all-time VPN providers are pulling their servers out of Hong Kong now that Beijing has causeless more direct control of the nominally autonomous former British colony.
"Effective immediately, Private Internet Access (PIA) is wiping and shutting downwardly our VPN servers located in Hong Kong in response to the new Chinese national security police foisted by fiat on Hong Kong," the U.S.-based service Private Cyberspace Access announced in a web log post yesterday (July fourteen).
Private Cyberspace Admission isn't the only VPN provider to brand such a motion. "Starting today, TunnelBear will be disabling its Hong Kong servers in order to ensure the safety of our users," the Toronto-based VPN provider TunnelBear, a subsidiary of U.Southward. antivirus behemothic McAfee, said in a blog mail Monday (July 13).
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On July ane, a new Chinese law went into effect in Hong Kong that effectively nullifies many of the free-speech and free-assembly safeguards that Beijing was supposed to respect until 2047, according to the agreement made with United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland when the city-land reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Every bit a upshot, the U.S. government announced that information technology would no longer share sensitive technologies with Hong Kong-based companies, a tacit announcement that the U.S. no longer recognizes Hong Kong as separate from mainland China.
'Protecting our users' data'
"China'southward new national security police force allows police enforcement to seize servers located in Hong Kong without a warrant and otherwise execute warrantless interception of communications," the Private Cyberspace Access web log postal service said.
"PIA will not operate servers in locations that have enacted anti-privacy internet laws or proven to non follow the rule of law," it added. "Our commitment to privacy is why PIA has previously removed servers in Brazil, S Korea, and Russia."
"Our top priority is protecting our users' information," TunnelBear said. "Calling for Hong Kong independence is now a crime under 'secession,' and working with a strange government or organisation against the cardinal Chinese government is now a crime under 'inciting hatred.'"
TunnelBear added that "the constabulary also includes the introduction of 'national security education,' stronger regime oversight over foreign news outlets and NGOs, and greater wiretapping abilities for police."
Services are still reachable from Hong Kong
Both companies said that no user data would be jeopardized if their servers were to be seized by police, but TunnelBear said that configuration keys might be in danger.
"Our conclusion to remove Hong Kong from the server list is to: a) protect our configuration keys [and] b) monitor the reach of the new security law on technical ecosystems in Hong Kong," TunnelBear said.
"To minimize the potential impact to our networks we take scaled up our Singapore and Japan regions' capabilities, and recommend people in Hong Kong connect to them instead."
Private Internet Access said that users based in Hong Kong "volition soon exist able to connect to a new Hong Kong exit gateway ... through servers located in countries with more favorable laws regarding privacy."
Giving free VPN accounts to dissidents
Yesterday, TunnelBear followed upward its withdrawal from Hong Kong by announcing a partnership with four non-governmental organizations to distribute 20,000 gratuitous VPN accounts to people effectually the world facing government censorship of the internet.
"By providing VPNs, which encrypt IP addresses and let individuals to bypass local censorship, this initiative ensures that activists, journalists and communities have access to and the ability to share critical information and browse the open internet, regardless of location," TunnelBear said in a press release.
NordVPN staying in Hong Kong
Notwithstanding, NordVPN, one of the consumer VPN industry's most widely used services, told PC Mag that it was staying in Hong Kong for now.
"At the moment there is nothing indicating that our users are in whatsoever danger," NordVPN said to PC Magazine. "Our customers look accessibility and freedom, and we are not going to restrict them without a good reason."
There was no word from two other major VPN providers that have ties to Hong Kong. PureVPN is officially based in Hong Kong, although information technology has developers and operations in Islamic republic of pakistan and other countries.
An ExpressVPN executive told Tom's Guide terminal year that the company had some operations in Hong Kong. The visitor is legally domiciled in the British Virgin Islands.
Tom'due south Guide has asked for comment from both ExpressVPN and PureVPN, and we will update this story when we receive a reply.
UPDATE: An ExpressVPN spokesperson told us that the company was not founded in Hong Kong, as we stated earlier.
The spokesperson said that "ExpressVPN has a distributed squad globally and has since its founding." We thank ExpressVPN for the clarification.
"As our VPN servers are already specifically architected non to contain personal or sensitive data on customers, we do not currently have plans to remove Hong Kong as a server location option for users," a argument provided to Tom's Guide by the ExpressVPN spokesperson said. "Nosotros believe that the best defense is never having whatever data on our VPN servers to seize or hand over."
The statement added that "our VPN servers run in RAM just," and "as a result, no information (including certificates or credentials) can persist later on a organization is powered down, whether because it is rebooted or physically removed from a information centre."
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/vpns-leave-hong-kong
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