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If TikTok does indeed go down on Sunday for Americans, they may have a tool to continue accessing the popular social app: a VPN.
The Chinese-owned app will be removed from mobile app stores and the internet for US users on Sunday as a result of a law signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024 that requires the app to be sold to a qualified buyer before the deadline.
Barring a last-minute sale or a Supreme Court stay, the app will almost certainly disappear from the iPhone and Android app stores. It won’t be removed from people’s phones, but it may stop working.
TikTok plans to shut down its service to Americans on Sunday, meaning even those who have already downloaded the app won’t be able to continue using it, according to reports this week from Reuters and Information. an apple and Google did not comment on its plans to remove apps from its app stores on Sunday.
“Essentially, an app or a website can check where users came from,” said Eustace Palekas, head of product at IProyal.com, a proxy service. “Based on that, they can impose restrictions based on their location.”
Masking your physical access point to the Internet
This may turn off most users, but for particularly enterprising Americans, using a VPN may allow them to continue using the app.
VPNs and related business-to-business technology, called proxies, work by tunneling a user’s Internet traffic through a server in another country, giving the impression that they are accessing the Internet from a location other than where they physically are.
This works because every time a computer connects to the Internet, it is identified by an IP number, which is a 12-digit number that is different for each individual computer. The first six digits of the number identify the network, which also includes information about the physical region from which the request originated.
In China, people have used VPNs for years to bypass the country’s firewall, which blocks American sites like Google and Facebook. When India banned TikTok in 2020, traffic on VPN networks increased significantly, and people often use VPNs to watch sports events from countries where official broadcasts are not available.
According to lobby group VPN Trust Initiative, the VPN market will be worth nearly $38 billion by 2022.
“We consistently see significant spikes in demand for VPNs when access to online platforms is restricted, and this situation is no different,” said Lauren Hendry Parsons, privacy officer at ExpressVPN, a $5-a-month VPN provider.
“We’re not here to support TikTok, but the looming US ban highlights why VPNs matter—millions rely on them for secure, private, and unrestricted internet access,” ProtonVPN posted on social media earlier this week. ProtonVPN offers its services for $10 per month.
VPN cost
Both ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN allow users to set their own internet access location.
Most VPN services charge a monthly fee to pay for their servers and traffic, but some use a business model where they collect user data or traffic trends, such as when Meta offered a free VPN so he could keep track of which competitor apps were growing fast.
A key trade-off for those using a VPN is speed, because requests must go through an intermediary computer to mask users’ physical location.
And while VPNs have worked in the past when governments banned apps, that doesn’t guarantee that VPNs will work if TikTok goes down. It won’t be clear whether ExpressVPN will get access to TikTok until the ban takes effect, Parsons told CNBC in an email. It’s also possible that TikTok could identify Americans trying to use a VPN to access the app.
(L-R) Sarah Baus of Charleston, South Carolina holds a sign that says ‘Save TikTok’ as she and fellow content creators Sally Miley of Jackson, Mississippi and Kelly Goodwin of Columbia, South Carolina stand outside the US Supreme Court building in qualities of the court. hears oral arguments on whether to repeal or delay a law that could ban TikTok in the US, January 10, 2025. in Washington, DC.
Andrey Garnik | Getty Images
VPNs and proxies to bypass regional restrictions have been part of the internet landscape for decades, but their use is growing as governments seek to ban certain services or apps.
Programs are removed all the time at the request of government agencies. Almost 1500 programs were removed regions due to government requirements to phase out more than 1,000 of them in China by 2023, according to Apple. Most are add-ons that violate laws such as anti-gambling or Chinese video game regulations, but increasingly countries are banning the add-ons for reasons of national security or economic development.
The U.S. is now poised to ban one of the country’s most popular apps — with 115 million users, according to estimates provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower, making it the second most downloaded app in 2024 for iOS and Android. a market research firm.
“As we see increasing attempts to fragment and censor the Internet, the role of VPNs in preserving Internet freedom is becoming increasingly important,” said Parsons.
