Apple slammed for removing privacy apps from Chinese app store

Couple using iPhone/.
(Image credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

Apple is under fire for pulling "most major" virtual private network (VPN) services from the Chinese version of its app store this past weekend. The company did so in response to a rule from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) that bans unlicensed VPNs.

"Earlier this year China's MIIT announced that all developers offering VPNs must obtain a license from the government," the company said in a statement on the change. "We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.