Chinese Internet Users Unable to View Overseas Websites
- Posted on 25th May 2011
- in China at Home, Features
- by admin
By Nathan Griffiths
Many Internet users find Error messages appear in place of overseas websites (Credit: Creamania)
Chinese universities and corporations are bearing the brunt of an unexplained wave of service interruptions that are blocking access to popular overseas websites and services including Gmail, Yahoo, and even Apple’s iTunes Store.
Complaints began surfacing online on May 6 that Chinese Internet users were having problems accessing foreign websites while connected to Virtual Private Networks (VPN) at universities and corporate offices. Users posted notices from schools and offices online, which advised that VPN connections to many foreign websites were unstable or had been blocked entirely.
Online notices at both Southern Medical University and Zhejiang University said the school’s Internet Service Providers (ISP) had restricted the number of connections to foreign websites allowed by the schools. The Chinese Academy of Sciences indicated that access to overseas websites had been blocked because their VPNs were being used to access illegal content.
A VPN works by creating an encrypted connection between computers that cannot be monitored, making VPNs a popular way for users in China to access websites blocked by the “Great Firewall.” By using a VPN to make a secure connection to a computer outside China, users inside the country are able to surf the Internet without restriction or fear of surveillance.
William Long, a prominent Chinese technology blogger, suggested that authorities may have upgraded China’s firewall to monitor the number of connections to foreign websites. A researcher on Internet censorship from the University of Hong Kong, however, felt the service interruptions were most likely accidental, perhaps the “unexpected outcome” of an upgrade to the firewall.
Chinese authorities have remained silent on the matter, declining to comment or denying any knowledge of the issue.
Whatever the reasons, the problems are common enough that some organizations began warning users to only visit “work related” foreign websites. A Chinese Twitter user posted an internal corporate memo requesting that staff avoid using “circumvention tools and VPN to get access to overseas websites [which] could result in the blocking of corporate port to overseas IPs.”
Despite widespread reports of connection problems at businesses and universities, VPN connections for individual users appear largely unaffected.
While some users have complained of slow connections on their home VPNs, the webmaster for bestvpnservice.com, a website and blog dedicated to the use of VPNs in evading censorship, said that he was able to confirm with several commercial VPN operators that their users in China had not been experiencing abnormal service interruptions. Several users with personal VPNs also confirmed that they have not been experiencing any connection problems.
Tags: Censorship, Education, Internet, Nathan Griffiths
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You can check if a site is blocked by The Great Firewall of China at http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/
Thanks for the insight. We have had troubles with our schools internet connection and we have had some unusual answers as to why. This gives me a more conclusive answer even though there is NO specific reason in the article.
Glenn, I’d be interested to learn what reasons you have heard & any details about the problems your school had with their internet connections.
Part of the reason we couldn’t give any specifics is because the details are still unfolding, but the main reason is simply that nobody really knows (well, no one who’s willing to talk about it, at least). At this point in time, it’s mostly speculation.
[...] Other reports combined Southern Medical University and Zhejiang University to a list, suggesting a problem ranged opposite a country. (Because of a stream call of arrests in a country, sources interviewed in China for this square will not be named.) [...]
[...] Other reports added Southern Medical University and Zhejiang University to the list, suggesting the problem ranged across the country. (Because of the current wave of arrests in the country, sources interviewed in China for this piece will not be named.) [...]
I’ve been at a university in Beijing where the internet has always slow in the afternoon, but was fast morning and nights. Within the past week or so however, the internet has started to regularly fail to work, sometimes for over an hour.
When attempting to connect to a instant messenger application, it stated there was a problem connecting with the server. The same issue came when using my internet browser. Usually my solution to the problem was to turn off my connection and restart it. It occasionally works, but other times I just have to leave it alone for an hour or two and then try again.
I was glad to see this article because it makes me feel a bit more assured this isn’t the schools poor quality server causing these disruptions.
[...] Other reports added Southern Medical University and Zhejiang University to the list, suggesting the problem ranged across the country. (Because of the current wave of arrests in the country, sources interviewed in China for this piece will not be named.) [...]
I found this article recently.
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/larlar1286/1/1305154586/tpod.html
It says something about a crackdown before the July 1st anniversary of the communist party of China.
China has a habit of cracking down on things during big events, and then easing up afterwards. Here’s hoping, if this is the case, that they do ease up afterwards.
-Caid.
We shared a post at CIW about website visibility in China; I hope it is helpful. http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/1086/website-visibility-in-china/
[...] Chinese Internet Users Unable to View Overseas Websites [...]