After terrifying rumours of a mass cyberspace clean-up targeting the likes of illegal and unsanctioned 'special communications lines' – including VPNs – were quelled back in January following an announcement from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) that individual users would not be targeted, we thought we could browse easy for a while. But the rumours are back.
According to a recently released Bloomberg Technology report, the Government has asked the state-run telecoms firms to block individual users from accessing VPNs by 1 February 2018 – and that includes the familiar names: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. The MIIT and telecoms companies are yet to respond.
While it's uncertain what the ban would mean for individual users, we're guessing we can kiss our daily Facebook, Twitter and Instagram fixes goodbye – not to mention accessing hundreds of other global sites blocked by the Great Firewall, including Google, YouTube, New York Times, Pornhub, SoundCloud, Dropbox, Bloomberg itself, the list goes on...
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