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While continuing its crackdown on services that help Chinese citizens to bypass Great Firewall, Chinese authorities have sentenced a man to five-and-a-half years in prison for selling a VPN service without obtaining a proper license from the government.

Earlier this year, the Chinese government announced a ban on "unauthorized" VPN services, making it mandatory for companies to obtain an appropriate license from the government in order to operate in the country.

Citizens in China usually make use of VPN and Proxy services to bypass the country's Great Firewall, also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country.

The Great Firewall project already blocked access to more than 150 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, which includes Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Tumblr, and The Pirate Bay in the country.

VPN helps Chinese citizens encrypt their Internet traffic and route it through a distant connection so that they can hide their identities and location data while accessing websites that are usually restricted or censored by the country.

So to tighten grip over the Internet, the Chinese government announced a 14-month "clean-up" campaign in January, which now resulted in the sentence of Wu Xiangyang, a Chinese citizen from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, for offering a non-licensed VPN service from 2013 until this June that helped thousands of users illegally bypass Great Firewall.

Xiangyang was also fined 500,000 yuan ($76,000) by the court in the southern region of Guangxi, according to an announcement from China's Procuratorate Daily on Wednesday.

The report also said he was convicted of collecting "illegal revenue" of 792,638 yuan ($120,500) from his unlicensed business.

Xiangyang marketed the VPN service on its website, popular shopping site Taobao (owned by Alibaba) and on social media sites. In March last year, his company also claimed on Twitter to have 8,000 foreigners and 5,000 businesses using its VPN service to browse websites blocked in China.

This wasn't the first sentencing made in China for selling a VPN service without holding a proper license. Another Chinese citizen, Deng Jiewei, was also sentenced to nine months in prison and fined 5,000 Chinese yuan this March for selling unauthorized VPNs on his website.

The Hacker News reported in July that Apple also removed some of the popular VPN apps, including ExpressVPN and Star VPN, from its official Chinese app store to comply with the government crackdown that will remain in place until March 31, 2018.

Image source: goldenfrog

In an effort to continue its crackdown on VPNs, Chinese authorities have arrested a 26-year-old man for selling VPN software on the Internet.

China's Supreme Court has sentenced Deng Jiewei from Dongguan in Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, to nine months in prison for selling virtual private network (VPN) software through his own small independent website.

VPN encrypts users' Internet traffic and routes it through a distant connection so that web surfers can hide their identities and location data while accessing websites that are usually restricted or censored by any country.

Chinese citizens usually make use of VPNs to bypass the Great Firewall of China, also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country.

The project already blocked access to some 171 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and The Pirate Bay in the country.

But to tighten grip over the Internet and online users, the Chinese government announced a 14-month-long crackdown on VPNs in the country at the beginning of this year, requiring VPN service providers to obtain prior government approval.

The move made most VPN vendors in the country of 730 million Internet users illegal, and has now resulted in the arrest of Deng, who was convicted of "providing software and tools for invading and illegally controlling the computer information system."

According to the court documents posted on the China's Supreme People's Court website, Deng has been selling two VPN services on his website since October 2015, and was first detained in August last year.

Deng along with his partner Jiang Moufeng made nearly 14,000 Chinese yuan (just US$2,138) selling the VPN software, which allowed users to "visit foreign websites that could not be accessed by a mainland IP address."

Deng has been found guilty of intrusions and "illegal control of computer information system procedures," and has been sentenced to nine months imprisonment and fined 5,000 Chinese yuan.

Deng was actually sentenced in March this year, but the online court documents were circulated on a Chinese blog tracking social media trends in China, called What's on Weibo, only on Sunday.

We reported in July that Apple also removed some of the popular VPN apps, including ExpressVPN and Star VPN, from its official Chinese app store in order to comply with the government crackdown that will remain in place until March 31, 2018.

In order to comply with Chinese censorship law, Apple has started removing all virtual private network (VPN) apps from the App Store in China, making it harder for internet users to bypass its Great Firewall.

VPN service providers that provide services in China has accused the United States tech giant of complying with Chinese stringent cyberspace regulations.

In a blog post, the developers of ExpressVPN reported that Apple informed them that their VPN app had been pulled from the company's Chinese App Store, and it seems all major VPN clients have received the same notice from Apple.

China has strict Internet censorship laws through the Great Firewall of China – the country's Golden Shield project that employs a variety of tricks to censor Internet and block access to major foreign websites in the country.

The Great Firewall is already blocking some 171 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Tumblr, and The Pirate Bay in the country.

Therefore, to thwart these restrictions and access these websites, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens use virtual private networks (VPNs) that encrypt their online traffic and route it through a distant connection.

However, earlier this year, China announced a crackdown on VPNs and proxy services in the country and made it mandatory for all VPN service providers and leased cable lines operators to have a license from the government to use such services.

This 14-month-long crackdown on the use of unsupervised internet connections, including VPNs was launched by the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who called it a "clean-up" of China's Internet connections.

Now, ExpressVPN received a notice from Apple that its app would be removed from the China-based App Store "because it includes content that is illegal in China."

"We're disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China's censorship efforts," ExpressVPN said in a statement.

Not just ExpressVPN alone, but another VPN service provider, Star VPN, also received same notice from Apple, the company confirmed via its official Twitter account on Saturday.

"We are writing to notify you that your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China," Apple said in the notice. "We know this stuff is complicated, but it is your responsibility to understand and make sure your app conforms with all local laws."

Although Apple did not comment on this issue, it is no coincidence, as the company has severely been implementing various aspects of Chinese law in recent months for its regional operations in the most populated country.

Earlier this year, Apple removed the New York Times (NYT) app from its Chinese App Store because the app was in "violation of local regulations."

The tech giant has even partnered with a local firm in the southwestern province of Guizhou earlier this month to set up its first data centre in China, which will store all user information for Chinese customers.