Taobao Bans Sale of VPN, Proxy Services – Climbing Great Firewall Gets Tougher

Taobao, China’s biggest e-commerce platforms, is banning the sale of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and IP proxies on its popular C2C shopping site. Various VPNs and proxy servers are used by some Chinese netizens to ‘jump over the wall’ – ie: evade the massive Great Firewall (GFW) which blocks so many politically sensitive and social media sites.

This crackdown has been revealed by a Taobao user who posted the official removal notice onto the site’s discussion boards (here’s the link; in case that’s deleted, here’s a screenshot). The move is likely caused by pressure from authorities, who frown upon any attempts to evade its web filtering system, even though proxies and VPNs are – for now – technically legal.

This edict went out on August 9th, but I just discovered it today. Now a search for the acronym ‘VPN’ and the corresponding word in Chinese reveals no relevant results among Taobao’s numerous C2C stores. My colleague confirms that there were numerous such items on Taobao, but they all appear to have vanished.

In a rough translation, Taobao’s official notice on this crackdown reads:

Dear users,

This is a notice to those it might concern: VPN software, or any service that helps to access overseas sites, to jump over the wall, is prohibited from sale on Taobao. Now banned products include VPNs – domestic or foreign (including games) – IP proxies, and VPN software. All those are covered in the new restrictions, so please remove the relevant VPN products from your stores.

We encourage members to report all types of contraband/illegal goods. We will deal with your concerns promptly.

Thank you for your support and cooperation of/with Taobao. Taobao is more exciting because of you!

Well, Taobao is now more restrictive – rather than “exciting” – because of this new edict. In recent years, some homegrown VPN services have popped up, and have been spreading their word via Google ads. Some had been using Taobao as a convenient way to let users pay up, since Taobao’s online payment method, Alipay, is so ubiquitous. But now that has been ceased.

Net freedoms in China have gravely worsened in 2010 and 2011. Conventional blockings of websites – such as Twitter, Facebook, and numerous Google products – are now being backed up by more stealthy DNS attacks (by the Great Firewall?) on sites and services that authorities don’t want Chinese netizens to use. VPNs and proxies have borne the brunt of such attacks.

And now Taobao is helping to shut down one convenient payment method for some such proxy and VPN services. It’s getting harder and harder to ‘climb the wall’ – and that’s exactly how authorities want it to be.