Chinese governments have sentenced a young man (26-year-old) to 9 months in jail for setting up a website for helping people bypass government controls on where they can go online.
Deng Jiewei (the prisoner), from Guangdong, was charged with illegally selling VPNs. VPNs are banned in China because they allow people to avoid government monitoring of what they are doing.
Police said that Deng set up 2 websites together with a business partner (Jiang Moufeng) in October 2015 on which he sold VPN program that is able to bypass China’s Great Firewall.
Both set up their original website on “jumoss.com” where they sold a VPN product named “Flying Over SS”. In February 2016, they modified their website to “yingsuoyun.com” and rebranded the VPN application to “Shadow Shuttle Cloud”.
They made almost 14,000 Chinese yuan (only US$2,138) by selling the VPN app, which enabled users to “visit foreign websites that could not be reached by a mainland IP address.”
According to whatsonweibo:
Chinese authorities have introduced numerous restrictions on virtual private networks (VPNs) this year. In January, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice that it will strictly contain the unapproved use of VPNs by Chinese firms.
Actually, China does not prevent VPN applications, but VPN providers must register with the government and obtain a permit.