Almost a Third of World's Top VPNs Are Secretly Owned By Chinese Firms, Study Finds

'Almost a third (30%) of the world's top virtual private network (VPN)
providers are secretly owned by six Chinese companies, according to a
study by privacy and security research firm VPNpro. The study shows
that the top 97 VPNs are run by just 23 parent companies, many of
which are based in countries with lax privacy laws. Six of these
companies are based in China and collectively offer 29 VPN services,
but in many cases, information on the parent company is hidden to
consumers. Researchers at VPNpro have pieced together ownership
information through company listings, geolocation data, the CVs of
employees and other documentation. In some instances, ownership of
different VPNs is split amongst a number of subsidiaries. For example,
Chinese company Innovative Connecting owns three separate businesses
that produce VPN apps: Autumn Breeze 2018, Lemon Cove and All
Connected. In total, Innovative Connecting produces 10 seemingly
unconnected VPN products, the study shows. Although the ownership of a
number of VPN services by one company is not unusual, VPNpro is
concerned that so many are based in countries with lax or
non-existence privacy laws. '

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/07/05/1944235

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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