'Clouding' the Issue - the Great Firewall

[Allon]

I did read about NordVPN but there were some negatives they apparently have gotten over. I guess it's a balancing act.

 

Yeah, I have been bumped out of some sites when I tried to register. They do not allow VPN's. I guess they went that IP. Well I don't give it to them.

 

I did try all the protocols on ExpressVPN and auto seems to work as well as any. I do agreed that TCIP seemed to be more reliable but then it crashed as well.

 

I have another month on ExpressVPN. Already have NordVPN on the iPhone when I use internet. It is seamless.

'

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

‘Winter has come’: Chinese social media stunned as nearly 10,000 accounts shut down

• Cybercensor says sweeping crackdown will help establish a new norm to rein in influencers ‘damaging’ online public opinion

 

The 9,800 accounts shut down so far in the latest round include those belonging to a popular talk show celebrity, an entertainment blogger who shared film footage, online influencers commenting on social issues and bloggers writing extensively on ethnicity.

The Cyberspace Administration also summoned representatives from two major “we-media” platforms – Weibo, China’s version of Twitter; and WeChat – on Monday to reprimand them over their management.

The two platforms were given “serious warnings” for their “irresponsibility and lax management”, which resulted in the we-media “growing wild and creating chaos”, the administration said in a statement.

 

 

[Randy W]

I'm convinced now that the ExpressVPN Windows client is faulty - unable to reliably "keep it up", in a way that is NOT the fault of the Great Firewall, or the internet infrastructure here in China.

 

I am now using ExpressVPN on my phone - it seems to perform seamlessly there. I can leave it on all the time without noticing, except to access some sites in China. I have always gotten better performance there, even when connected through my WiFi.

 

But it may be worthwhile to keep TWO VPN's, one as backup - I have until my ExpressVPN subscription runs out in March to decide whether to keep it.

 

NordVPN has literally THOUSANDS of servers in the U.S., so a little game of hide-and-seek may work to your advantage. They tell you the load on each server - simply choose one with a load less than 10%.

 

 

I may be ready to declare a winner. ExpressVPN has performed flawlessly for a week or two now - connecting easily within a few seconds, with excellent speed and connectivity, and remaining connected, except for occasional heavy network load in the early afternoon.

 

NordVPN doesn't seem to connect at all - but I give up easily and switch back to ExpressVPN.

 

My guess is that they've fixed their problem I mentioned in November, and just generally put a lot more research into China issues.

 

NordVPN has the advantage of a LARGE number of servers, but, well, perhaps they got too much attention from Winston and C-Milk who now have a sponsorship.

 

Then again, I DO intend to keep two different VPN providers around for the foreseeable future.

[Randy W]

from the Atlantic - if you want to know why some things are "banned", while others aren't

 

Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China

Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.

 

Last winter, after the Chinese Communist Party announced the abolition of presidential term limits, Beijing temporarily moved to censor social-media references to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The government’s concern was that activists would use these titles to charge, in not-so-subtle code, that China was moving in a decidedly authoritarian direction. But censors did not bother to ban the sale of these texts either in bookstores or online. It was—and remains—as easy to buy 1984 and Animal Farm in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles.

The different treatment of these texts and their titles helps illuminate the complicated reality of censorship in China. It’s less comprehensive, less boot-on-the-face—as Orwell might have put it—and quirkier than many Westerners imagine.

Censors have banned books simply for containing a positive or even neutral portrayal of the Dalai Lama. The government disallows the publication of any work by Liu Xiaobo, the determined critic of the Communist Party who in 2017 became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner since Nazi times to die in prison. Again, for a time last year Chinese citizens could not type “nineteen,” “eighty,” and “four” in sequence—but they could, and still can, buy a copy of 1984, the most famous novel on authoritarianism ever written. Prefer Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? They can buy that text, too, just as easily, although its title also joined the taboo list last winter.

Here’s the rub: Monitors pay closer attention to material that might be consumed by the average person than to cultural products seen as highbrow and intended for educated groups. (An internet forum versus an old novel.) As a result, Chinese writers are watched more closely than foreign ones. (Liu Xiaobo versus Orwell.) Another rule of thumb is that more leeway is given to imaginative works about authoritarianism than ones that specifically engage with its manifestations in post-1949 China. (1984 versus a book on the Dalai Lama.)

When a book crosses some lines but not others, censors generally use a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer. . . .

. . .

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the first thing some East Berliners did was rush to fabled West Berlin department stores. One reason the Chinese Communist Party has outlived so many predictions of its imminent demise, in the wake of what political scientist Ken Jowitt dubbed the “Leninist extinction,” is that China’s leaders have been intent since the early 1990s to allow citizens at least partial access to consumer goods, including cultural products, that are available to their counterparts in other parts of the world. They know that if they keep the lid on too tight, they could stoke envy, and that envy could turn into a serious political problem.

 

[Randy W]

from Reuters - all but guaranteeing that foreigners will need a VPN

 

Microsoft says Bing search engine blocked in China

 

“We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” the company said in a statement.

. . .

Bing was the only major foreign search engine accessible from within China’s so-called Great Firewall. Microsoft censored search results on sensitive topics, in accordance with government policy.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

 

from Reuters - all but guaranteeing that foreigners will need a VPN

 

Microsoft says Bing search engine blocked in China

 

“We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” the company said in a statement.

. . .

Bing was the only major foreign search engine accessible from within China’s so-called Great Firewall. Microsoft censored search results on sensitive topics, in accordance with government policy.

 

 

 

 

 

Bing is back! Microsoft’s search engine is no longer blocked in China

 

Reports of Bing's death were apparently greatly exaggerated

 

Bing is back, baby!

After cn.bing.com, the emasculated version of Bing’s search engine built to please Chinese censors, became inaccessible in mainland China for much of Wednesday and Thursday, news outlets across the world began reporting that Bing had unceremoniously been shoved behind the Great Firewall.

Citing a source familiar with the matter, the Financial Times even reported that China Unicom had been ordered to block Bing for “illegal content” and Microsoft itself acknowledged that its search engine was inaccessible, adding that it was “engaged in determining the next step.”

However, only a few hours later, Bing’s Chinese search engine suddenly became usable once more. Praise be! Praise be!

 

 

 

from Abacus

 

From Bing to Baidu: How people in China search online

Bing goes offline for some Chinese internet users, prompting censorship fears

Update, January 25, 2019: Microsoft confirms that Bing was inaccessible in China, but service is now restored.

Bing even trails Google in China, which is remarkable because Google is blocked in China -- and Bing has an official presence in the country. Still, even a small share is a lot in a country with more than twice as many internet users as the entire population of the US -- and as trust in Baidu drops, Bing has room to grow.

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

We still drop to 0 once or twice a day, but I'm now able to watch YouTube videos without having to download them - and ExpressVPN works REALLY well these days

 

China Pictorial

Page Liked · 3 hrs ·

Chinese Internet users experience faster broadband speed

In the fourth quarter of 2018, the average download speed for Internet users in China reached 20Mbps, according to a recently released report on the country’s broadband speed.
The report noted that the average download speed of fixed broadband networks was 28.06Mbps, up 47.6 percent year-on-year, while the average download speed for 4G mobile broadband users increased by 21.3 percent year-on-year, up to 22.05Mbps.

For fixed broadband network users, the average page opened in 0.93 seconds and the average video download rate was 20.72Mbit/s.

China will also step up efforts in constructing 5G networks and promoting the commercial use of 5G technology, which will boost Internet innovation.

5G commercial terminals are expected to start launching in mid-2019, said the Minister for Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei.
Source: People's Daily

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/ChinaPic/photos/a.558235270968533/1938114729647240/?type=3&theater

[Randy W]

ExpressVPN seems to have been blocked for 2 days now "Our engineers are working to restore connectivity in China," At least I have NordVPN as a backup.

[Randy W]

ExpressVPN seems to have been blocked for 2 days now "Our engineers are working to restore connectivity in China," At least I have NordVPN as a backup.

 

 

Still out of action, although I hear some people have been restored.

 

'Two sessions': Beijing locked down for China's greatest political spectacle

Activists rounded up and dissent stifled as Xi Jinping faces public scrutiny over trade, Xinjiang and Huawei at annual meeting

 

NordVPN, though, has been working seamlessly, so I'll just stick with it until after the powwow.

[Randy W]

from the SCMP on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/463811177695808/

 

South China Morning Post

5 hrs ·

An army of employees closely monitors web users in this Chinese internet censorship centre. They see themselves as "sanitation workers".

 

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/463811177695808/

[Allon]

I kept ExpressVPN but am still mixed about it, but less so when I checked out other vpn's. The function of turning Wi-Fi off when the computer sleeps and thus blocking anything on the internet is getting old, especially when one computer keep the internet on when asleep (and it has ExpressVPN) and the other goes off.

 

I do have Malwarebytes installed as well as McAfee and I suspect the firewalls have something to do with the unreliability, but it is not really that bad. It is worth the overprotection.

 

I also use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. It encrypts my searches before they go out and no backups/recordings are made by the vendor. (At least that's what they say....) Search performance is not affected. So even my ISP does not know what I am searching even if they have a tracker. Take that NSA.....

[Randy W]

I kept ExpressVPN but am still mixed about it, but less so when I checked out other vpn's. The function of turning Wi-Fi off when the computer sleeps and thus blocking anything on the internet is getting old, especially when one computer keep the internet on when asleep (and it has ExpressVPN) and the other goes off.

 

I do have Malwarebytes installed as well as McAfee and I suspect the firewalls have something to do with the unreliability, but it is not really that bad. It is worth the overprotection.

 

I also use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. It encrypts my searches before they go out and no backups/recordings are made by the vendor. (At least that's what they say....) Search performance is not affected. So even my ISP does not know what I am searching even if they have a tracker. Take that NSA.....

 

 

Check out the options - you can leave Internet enabled (unblocked), if you don't mind un-encrypted traffic getting through (uncheck 'Stop all internet traffic if the VPN disconnects unexpectedly').

 

You can also allow some apps to connect on their own (without using ExpressVPN).

[Allon]

I get the options, but they are not consistently applied. As I indicated, two computers have the same settings and are similar in platform, but when one goes to sleep, the internet goes off. The other stays on.

 

And I don't want any unencrypted traffic at all going either way. I also do not want to go "naked" that is, plugging directly into a site from any application without the VPN. I use Cisco VPN with my work laptop and do not have trouble at all with it. All my machines have to be sterile. I do a lot of work at home and just cannot afford a breach since I do a lot of internal tech support on a host of other machines.

 

It's just an inconvenience to have to reconnect to the internet when one machine particularly goes to sleep.

[amberjack1234]

I use DuckDuckGo when I look up porn. Which get's less and less as the years go by.

 

I have always used Norton but in the last few years, it seems to want to control my whole computer and take up a lot of hard drive. Gives me a lot of issues with each computer recognizing my LAN. Is McFree better?

 

On the VPN I have been using Windscribe. I once looked up the top 10 VPN and it was like #4 or 5 and a lot cheaper. I guess that cheaper should have told me something but It seems to perform well at least here in the US. Then the wife saw what I was looking up and subscribed to it for a year so I am stuck with it for a while I guess. No issue with it either and seems to do a good job.

Edited April 17, 2019 by amberjack1234 (see edit history)

[Randy W]

But all in all, what I look for in China is NOT privacy, but the connection through the Great Firewall. ExpressVPN seems to technically be the best, but can still be blocked (and even blocked themselves for a day and a half), but NordVPN has the most servers.

 

Having TWO definitely comes in handy.