Using VPN in UAE Could Cost You $545,000 (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The President of the United Arab Emirates has issued a series of new federal laws relating to IT crimes, including a regulation that forbids anyone in the UAE from making use of virtual private networks to secure their web traffic from prying eyes. The new law states that anyone who uses a VPN or proxy server can be imprisoned and fined between $136,000-$545,000 if they are found to use VPNs fraudulently. Previously, the law was restricted to prosecuting people who used VPNs as part of an internet crime, but UK-based VPN and privacy advocate Private Internet Access says that the law has now changed to enable police in the UAE to go after anyone who uses VPNs to access blocked services, which is considered to be fraudulent use of an IP address.

Comments

Re:Corporate VPNs too?

[bev_tech_rob]

...and how does one define the use of VPNs fraudulently? Not very enlightened or informed.

According to the article (which I assume you read), use of a VPN fraudulently would be connecting to blocked services in the country in question, like Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. that have VOIP capabilities.

The government is basically protecting the revenues of the state telecoms that are threatened by this technology...and oh yeah, 'security'.