The usage of Virtual Private Network (VPN) is growing in countries like India. This is done to have a more secure and private Internet browsing experience.
However, a new report has warned that the Chinese Government has access to massive sets of data. The sets of data include private emails, messenger conversations, and personal records, as most of the VPNs being used are Chinese-owned.
According to Strike Source, approximately 20 percent of the world’s global population are “being either directly or potentially set up for the Chinese government to collect all of their private data”.
There are 4.57 billion Internet users in the world and 31 percent of those use a VPN network.
“Upon reviewing a sample size of 30 popular VPNs, we can estimate that approximately 62 percent of those are secretly Chinese-owned VPNs currently installed on 878,354,000 consumer user devices,” quoted Tom Jackson, a cybersecurity expert.
“VPN data is rich with information, and when paired with quantum computers decrypting the data traveling within those channels, we are vulnerable to attack from many different angles,” Jackson further informed.
“If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has access to 20 percent of the data going through the world’s VPNs generally, they should be expected to be using that data for a massive global spying operation. This could result in winning wars, shifting global power, and aiding the rise of an empire,” the expert warned.
In India, approximately 129 million people use VPNs to access the internet. It is still unknown how many of those now have data that has been compromised.
In 2020, 29 percent of Americans reported using a VPN for personal use (up from 11 percent in 2019).
This means that 39 million Americans may be sharing personal or otherwise secret data with China”.
Earlier this year, a number of VPN company databases were breached and leaked. The total amount of log data leaked exceeds one terabyte.
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