The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China refuted the recent reports on the intention of the authorities to block the access of private individuals to VPN-services that allow visiting forbidden sites, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Chinese edition of The Paper.

According to Bloomberg, the country's authorities ordered state-owned telecommunications companies, including China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to close access to the VPN by February 1, 2018.

"The department reporting to us did not publish such a notice. The reports that appeared in foreign media do not correspond to reality, "the ministry said..

Recall, many Chinese users are using the services of VPN-services to gain access to a number of sites blocked in the country, including many media sites, Google services, Facebook social network and Twitter microblogging network.

In January of this year, the ministry reported on strengthening control over the activities of VPN-services and illegal Internet providers in the country. Thus, the agency obliged all providers providing special cable Internet connection and VPN services to obtain a special permission from the authorities.