The Reason People In Hong Kong Rushed To Download Software Beyond The Firewall
On the opening day of the
May 21 meeting, the Chinese government issued the "Hong Kong National
Security Law", since then, the number of searches and downloads of software
that bypasses firewalls (VPN) in Hong Kong increased significantly.
"Hong Kong's National
Security Act" has added to the city's anxiety about cybersecurity.
NordVPN, a VPN provider,
revealed that on May 21, the number of VPN software downloads in Hong Kong
increased 120 times compared to the previous day. A NordVPN spokesman said
that in response to emergencies, they quickly installed new servers in Taiwan.
NordVPN said that the last
number of VPN downloads in Hong Kong was in October 2019, when the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) promoted "Extradition Law".
During the protest against
the extradition law, Hong Kong police made 5,325 requests for technology
companies to hand over user information, an increase of 1,000 times compared to
the first half of last year.
Facebook handed over the IP address and
information of the protests posted on June 12 last year on the social network
of democracy activist Chu Dinh (Zhou Ting).
Surfshark, another VPN
provider, also said that after the CCP proposed National Security Law, its
sales in Hong Kong suddenly skyrocketed, with an hourly sales equivalent to one
week's sales of last year.
“We have witnessed an incredible increase in Hong Kong users. It is clear that Hong Kong people feel that their security is directly threatened.”
Said Naomi Hodges, an Internet
security consultant.
According to Ray Walsh, an
expert at ProPrivacy VPN, the CCP took advantage of the disease to enhance
control of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong residents are concerned that their links
with the outside world will be affected, so they have sought services beyond
the firewall.
The VPN service can
redirect users to the site via a virtual server, allowing users to set the area
to restrict site browsing and also hide the user's real IP location, encrypting
road data transmission of users and protect users from being monitored by any
organization or government. Also on the server does not save browsing
history.
Many users in mainland
China also bypass firewalls via VPN.
Another cyber expert
reminded Hong Kong residents that they should regularly learn how to use new
encryption software to protect themselves. They may also consider deleting
chat logs and leaving groups.
The VPNPro Information
Security Research Institute published a survey result last year, showing that
97 major VPN providers in the world are controlled by 23 parent companies, and
6 of these 23 are companies. Chinese company with 29 VPN providers.
A person in Shenzhen who
was involved in local VPN operations revealed that Chinese companies have
started to set up or acquire VPN companies overseas on their own since 2015.
After these VPN companies merged with the Chinese company, although they
continue to charge service fees, the difficulty of bypassing firewalls is
increasing.
According to the report,
the purpose of expanding the CCP's VPN companies is to increase the difficulty
for users when they bypass the firewall, and to collect and analyze the content
and time of users browsing the web, linking connecting VPN user identifiers and
setting data for VPN users to enhance surveillance.
Since the CCP announced the
"Hong Kong National Security Law", in addition to the keyword
"VPN" in the number of searches on Google in Hong Kong has
skyrocketed, the terms "immigration" and "Taiwan" have also
become two other popular search keywords.
On the evening of May 21, the
number of searches for the term "immigrant" more than quadrupled and
the keyword "Taiwan" doubled.
No comments