O programador chinês Chen ganha a vida trabalhando remotamente para uma empresa de tecnologia ocidental.
Mas no seu tempo livre, ele responde a uma vocação maior: ajudar os seus concidadãos a ultrapassar o Grande Firewall que os impede de aceder livremente à Internet da China.
Chen is a volunteer “maintainer” who helps run V2Ray, one of a number of open-source virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers that are gaining in popularity amid China’s crackdown on commercial VPNs, which are illegal to use without government authorisation.
Like commercial offerings such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN, V2Ray, whose original developer is unknown, allows users to avoid censors and mask their internet activity.
But unlike those platforms, free-to-use V2Ray requires some level of technical knowledge to set up and features a range of customisation options.