Watchdog Says 53 VPN Apps Unavailable in Hong Kong Since Security Law Passed, Urges Apple To State Its Policy

Hong Kong Free Press: A total of 53 VPN applications have become unavailable in Apple's Hong Kong App Store since Beijing imposed a national security law (NSL) on the city in June 2020, a report by AppleCensorship has revealed. The digital freedom watchdog urged the US tech giant to clearly state how it would respond if Hong Kong or Beijing requested that apps be taken down.

In a report released on Thursday entitled 'Apps at Risk: Apple's censorship and compromises in Hong Kong,' AppleCensorship found that more apps were unavailable in Hong Kong's than in most of the 173 App Stores it monitored. According to AppleCensorship's latest statistics from last month, 2,370 or 16 per cent of the 14,782 apps it tested were unavailable in Hong Kong's App Store. The watchdog said only stores in Russia and China had more unavailable apps than their Hong Kong counterpart -- Russia had 2,754 and China had 10,837.

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