Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with china and greatfirewall

Using VPNS in China?

clockworkjoe — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:34:54 -0800

A friend of mine is moving to China in a couple of weeks and was wondering if anybody has any up to date information on getting around the great firewall with a VPN service? He had heard that since the revolutions in the Middle East and some calls for protest there the Chinese government had started cracking down a little harder on VPNs. So I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on how he should set everything up before he heads over there.

Why don't my proxies work anymore?

msbrauer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:00 -0800

Why have my proxies (Privoxy and GAppProxy) suddenly quit working? I'm using an up-to-date Vista installation. I use proxies periodically to get past China's Great Firewall. In the past, a strategy of Tor (by means of Vidalia/Privoxy/Torbutton) and GAppProxy (through FoxyProxy, set up using these instructions). I never use the two at the same time, i.e. if I'm using Tor, I'm not using GAppProxy, and vice versa. When I was last in China, in July, I had been using this setup for a few months with no problems.

I've just returned to China, and after a day or two of flawless operation, both proxies have quit working. To clarify, both proxy setups manage to get past the Great Firewall and transfer data. However, within a few seconds of data transfer through the proxy, I get a message from windows stating, "Privoxy has stopped working" or "HTTP Proxy. 127.0.0.1:8000 has stopped working" in the case of GAppProxy. Privoxy is running on port 8118.

Restarting the computer or the proxies doesn't solve the problem. Running one without the other doesn't solve the problem. Is there a possibility that something other than my computer is causing the problem, perhaps new strategies used by the Great Firewall spike the proxy somehow? The proxies remain operational if they are not in use, which is to say, if I start Privoxy or GAppProxy and don't transfer data through them, the services run with no problem.

While I haven't installed any internet-using programs in the week I've been back in China, since I didn't use the proxies for two months while outside of China, I can't be sure that the problem is a result of new conditions.

How can I troubleshoot this problem?

Google's services don't work in a specific way

msbrauer — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:30:10 -0800

Why aren't most google services working for me and why do the error pages look identical in firefox, chrome, and IE8? For about a week most google services have stopped working for me. Oddly, I get identical error messages that look like this in all three browsers on my computer (firefox, chrome, and IE8 in Windows Vista) as well as on Mac with Safari in OSX. By identical, I mean that the layout, font, and wording is exactly the same. I am in China, so this may be related to the Great Firewall, but I don't think so. As a comparison, here's an image of the error page I get when trying to view youtube (which is currently blocked in China): firefox, chrome, IE8. While the error is the same in those 3 screenshots, the browsers display them differently.

This behavior happens with all www.google.com/* services that I can remember, but gmail (www.gmail.com redirecting to mail.gmail.com) doesn't exhibit the problem.

How to ensure Internet privacy in China?

jbb7 — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:54:11 -0800

I'm living in a Chinese university dorm. I was running Web traffic through an SSH tunnel, and about 10 minutes into reading about China's Internet censorship (which naturally includes lots of blocked terms as examples, like "falun gong" and "Tibet"), the service staff in this building knocked on my door. They said "安全检查," which translates as "safety inspection." (On my dictionary, "检查" also translates as "to censor," but I'm sure that's not the right meaning in this case.) They peeked in the room when I opened the door (but they didn't come in). After they left, I looked around, and they didn't give anyone else on my floor a safety inspection. Also, I've been living here for 45 days and haven't had an inspection before. I went up to the front desk to clarify the reason for the inspection, and they told me that it happens on a weekly basis--but I've never even seen or heard of it happening.

Two questions here:
1) Is it reasonable to think this could be part of the Chinese government's Internet censorship policy? (When I signed up for Internet, I had to give my room number and passport.) I'm not afraid, but I'm just a little creeped out by this.

2) How can I protect against a man-in-the-middle attack? In other words, how can I get the correct public key for my SSH server? I didn't have it before I came to China, and I have noticed that my Web proxy frequently put up "certificate changed/inaccurate" notices, so I wouldn't put it past the Chinese government to listen in on "secure" connections by sending different certificates.

Fight the commies

saysthis — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:10:05 -0800

Wanna subvert an authoritarian regime? Help me get around the Great Firewall! Really, that's basically all. They've (China) perfected their blocking technology to the point where they can detect any search query, not just in google and yahoo, and they can block parts of sites. They block any and all web proxies the instant they go online, and the only way to completely get around the blocks is to encrypt all your traffic in HTML. I need to either a) learn to proxy outside of the country without the help of applications or b) get some impenetrable software. No BBC news. No blogspot. No google cache. Timeout errors way more often than should happen. Government spies monitoring my net traffic 'cause they know I'm a foreigner and shutting it down if I type the wrong thing into google. I only want to surf in peace.