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Tuesday 2 February 2010
Internet users turning to VPNs to breach firewall
Paid virtual private networks (VPNs) are quietly catching on on the mainland as a way to access forbidden websites, analysts say, while the authorities are leaving them alone until they become more popular.
Paid virtual private networks (VPNs) are quietly catching on on the mainland as a way to access forbidden websites, analysts say, while the authorities are leaving them alone until they become more popular.
VPNs, designed for secure internet use in offices, have spread over the past half year among expatriates and technology-savvy mainlanders since popular social networking website Facebook was blocked.
Twitter and YouTube are also blocked on the mainland, which uses a filtering “firewall” to block internet users from overseas website content that challenges the Communist Party.
The rise of VPNs comes as Beijing defends its curbs on the internet after the world’s biggest search engine provider, Google, threatened to shut down its Chinese Google.cn site over censorship and a severe hacking attack.
“So long as the VPN is outside China, it should not be a problem,” said Danny Levinson, publisher of ChinaTechNews.com. “We use our own VPN and it works fine.”
The authorities seldom block foreign-based paid VPNs and are likely to leave them be as long as the number of users stays small, a veteran information-technology analyst in Beijing said.
“It’s a little steam valve,” he said. “But if China’s army of netizens gets in on these things, there you are.”
The government aggressively shuts down free proxy servers, which can also unblock forbidden sites and are more widespread. Paid foreign VPNs have been blocked just once, ahead of National Day in October last year, users say.
About 10 foreign VPN services are popular on the mainland, but there are no estimates on the number of users, mainland information-technology analysts say.
VPNs work as overlays on top of larger computer networks, using encryption to make private traffic safe in the less secure internet environment.
“In China, accessing Facebook and Twitter are the main reasons why clients sign up,” said Chris Matthews, who runs the California-based Freedur and targets expatriates.
“The Chinese government doesn’t care about us, they just don’t want their citizens stumbling upon something on the internet that will cause them to [raise] questions.”
But technical and cost obstacles could stall growth in China’s VPN use outside offices, analysts say.
Some VPNs slow internet browsers to a crawl or require users to make tough changes to their computer systems before working at all, they say, while Chinese nationals without foreign currency credit cards often have no way to pay for them.
1 comment:
Internet users turning to VPNs to breach firewall
Reuters in Beijing
29 January 2010
Paid virtual private networks (VPNs) are quietly catching on on the mainland as a way to access forbidden websites, analysts say, while the authorities are leaving them alone until they become more popular.
VPNs, designed for secure internet use in offices, have spread over the past half year among expatriates and technology-savvy mainlanders since popular social networking website Facebook was blocked.
Twitter and YouTube are also blocked on the mainland, which uses a filtering “firewall” to block internet users from overseas website content that challenges the Communist Party.
The rise of VPNs comes as Beijing defends its curbs on the internet after the world’s biggest search engine provider, Google, threatened to shut down its Chinese Google.cn site over censorship and a severe hacking attack.
“So long as the VPN is outside China, it should not be a problem,” said Danny Levinson, publisher of ChinaTechNews.com. “We use our own VPN and it works fine.”
The authorities seldom block foreign-based paid VPNs and are likely to leave them be as long as the number of users stays small, a veteran information-technology analyst in Beijing said.
“It’s a little steam valve,” he said. “But if China’s army of netizens gets in on these things, there you are.”
The government aggressively shuts down free proxy servers, which can also unblock forbidden sites and are more widespread. Paid foreign VPNs have been blocked just once, ahead of National Day in October last year, users say.
About 10 foreign VPN services are popular on the mainland, but there are no estimates on the number of users, mainland information-technology analysts say.
VPNs work as overlays on top of larger computer networks, using encryption to make private traffic safe in the less secure internet environment.
“In China, accessing Facebook and Twitter are the main reasons why clients sign up,” said Chris Matthews, who runs the California-based Freedur and targets expatriates.
“The Chinese government doesn’t care about us, they just don’t want their citizens stumbling upon something on the internet that will cause them to [raise] questions.”
But technical and cost obstacles could stall growth in China’s VPN use outside offices, analysts say.
Some VPNs slow internet browsers to a crawl or require users to make tough changes to their computer systems before working at all, they say, while Chinese nationals without foreign currency credit cards often have no way to pay for them.
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