I built the VPN I needed when I was 15

I was 15 years old when China began purging Falun Gong in 1999. As an ethnic minority with relatives jailed by the Chinese Communist Party, I felt deep empathy for that community — people being persecuted simply for what they believed.

One day I found a CD on the stairs of my apartment building. It said ‘Falun Dafa Hao’ — Falun Dafa is good. I was a curious boy. I took it. I put it in my computer and kept clicking Next without really knowing what I was installing. Then a popup appeared: I now had access to the free world’s internet.

With both fear and curiosity, I used that software to see what China was hiding. The truth the government was blocking. I did it without getting caught.

That simple exposure to truth changed everything. It gave me a deep desire to live in the free world. Today I have been in the United States for 18 years, with my wife and four children — because of a CD on a staircase.

Freedom cannot be taken for granted. Today, everything reminds me of 1984 by George Orwell. We need to access the internet without censorship, surveillance, and bad actors. While using VPNs myself, I found that most of them serve the same masters. Data companies. Holding corporations. People who profit from the same surveillance they claim to protect you from.