The Apple and Google app stores reportedly continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, more than six weeks after they were identified in a Tech Transparency Project report.
A new article by the Tech Transparency article says the tech giants may also be profiting from these apps, which put Americans’ privacy and U.S. national security at risk, TTP found. The apps are virtual private networks (VPNs), which promise to mask a user’s identity as they browse the Internet. “But Chinese-owned VPNs raise serious privacy and security concerns for Americans because Chinese companies can be forced to share user data with the Chinese government under the country’s national security laws,” says the Tech Transparency Project. “VPNs have access to particularly sensitive user data since they see all of a person’s web activity.”
TTP’s April 1 report found that more than 20 of the top 100 free VPNs in the U.S. Apple App Store in 2024 showed evidence of Chinese ownership. None of these apps clearly disclosed their Chinese ties, and some obscured their origins behind layers of shell companies.
Several of the apps were linked to Qihoo 360, a Chinese cybersecurity firm that has been sanctioned by the U.S. over its ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army, TTP found. The Google Play Store, meanwhile, offered four Qihoo 360-connected apps—Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, Snap VPN, and Signal Secure VPN—as well as seven other Chinese-owned VPNs identified in TTP’s initial report.
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