A "Privacy Tool" That Reports Home: 64 China-Owned VPNs Are on US App Stores A Proton investigation published on August 27 surveyed more than 7,000 mobile VPN apps worldwide. Of the 390 available for download in the United States, 64 are owned by Chinese companies, and 31 of those conceal that ownership behind shell entities registered in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UK. US users downloaded these apps over 3 million times in June alone. Under Chinese law, companies must hand over user data to the government on request. An app marketed as a privacy tool can therefore sit inside the very surveillance system its users are trying to escape. The report also found that 85% of VPNs available in the US contain trackers, and 64 apps collect users' physical location through GPS and other geolocation data, accounting for roughly a fifth of all downloads studied. For journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders, location data is not an abstraction. It can show whether someone attended a protest or met a source. Apple and Google approve VPN listings largely on the basis of what developers tell them, without independently verifying whether an app behaves as its privacy policy claims. Proton is urging both companies to conduct genuine ownership and security checks, remove apps that fail them, and disclose where each service is actually based and where user data goes. For people living under censorship who depend on these tools to reach the outside world, choosing a service with transparent ownership and independent audits is not a matter of preference. It is a precondition for safety. 🔗