Over half the top free VPN apps on iOS and Android are linked to China
A report published by Top10VPN indicated that a great deal of “Free” VPN apps for mobile device (phones & tablets) owned by or are housed in China. Considering China moved to ban all VPN’s being used there by 2018; that statistic might sound curious.
The key findings of the report are :
- 59% of apps have links to China (17 apps)
- 86% of apps had unacceptable privacy policies, issues include:
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- Lack of important detail around logging policies that could lull people into false sense of security
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- Generic policies with no VPN-specific terms
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- No policy at all
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- Tracking user activity or sharing with third parties
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- Several privacy policies explicitly stated that they share data with China
- 55% of privacy policies were hosted in an amateur fashion
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- Free WordPress sites with ads
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- Plain text files on Pastebin
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- Text files on Amazon servers
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- Text files on raw URLs, such as IP addresses
- 64% of apps had no dedicated website – several had no online presence beyond app store listings.
- Vast majority of companies make it very difficult to find out where they are based and who is involved – for a minority it was impossible to track down the provider.
- Over half (52%) of customer support emails were personal accounts, ie Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc
- 83% of app customer support email requests for assistance were ignored
— Read more on www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3066490/over-half-the-top-free-vpn-apps-on-ios-and-android-are-linked-to-china