Gmail Reportedly Has Been Blocked In China 145
An anonymous reader is one of many to point out a report that Gmail has been blocked in China. A years-long war between Google and China that highlights the ideological chasm between the two behemoths has now entered a new phase. On Monday morning, reports confirmed online chatter that Gmail has been fully blocked in China. And transparency advocates say they know exactly what's to blame: China's Great Firewall. "I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google's presence in China and even weaken its market overseas," an anonymous representative of GreatFire.org told Reuters. "Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."
So what exactly is it blocking? (Score:1)
"Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."
, which would require blocking server to server traffic (and may cause more problems to China than the rest of the world). Is this what's happening or is it just something to "imagine", or a suggestion to the Chinese government on how to hit google harder?
Re:So what exactly is it blocking? (Score:5, Interesting)
which would require blocking server to server traffic
Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.
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Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.
If you mean the SMTP protocol supports chained delivery routes, then I do not think this is true (at least not used in practice). However, business customers of Gmail (at least) can request that a different SMTP server than Google's be used for outgoing mail, and (of course) anyone using an external mail client can send using any SMTP server they like.
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Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.
If you mean the SMTP protocol supports chained delivery routes, then I do not think this is true (at least not used in practice). However, business customers of Gmail (at least) can request that a different SMTP server than Google's be used for outgoing mail, and (of course) anyone using an external mail client can send using any SMTP server they like.
I run a personal mail server and know I know just enough to know that I have vast chasms of ignorance about mail and network rules/firewalls.
Wouldn't it be easier to filter outbound packets destined for Gmail's SMTP servers and prevent Chinese email users from sending email to Gmail users? (This is an honest question.)
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I think you mean Google's MX servers (the remote end when sending email through SMTP). If so, in a word, "yes", much easier, assuming users are using SMTP servers based in China. Indeed, you could simply prevent the connections from ever taking place, simulating authentication errors.
Re:So what exactly is it blocking? (Score:4, Informative)
China does DPI on basically all connections inside the country.
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China does DPI on basically all connections inside the country.
Man can't these dumb Chinks do anything original beyond slavishly copying us here in the west?
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The US government as official policy does not do DPI. While I am quite sure various agencies DO do it, whether it is legal is Big Question #1, and whether its universal is Big Question #2 (and Im sure it isnt). The most you could say for the NSA is they secretly try to subvert comms between you and Google.
China openly (in the sense that its official policy-- they dont generally advertise it) uses filter lists, works with companies to create "custom" chinese software (ie, TOM Skype), hotwords ALL text and
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just like NSA does on WHOLE internet traffic
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Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.
Or simpler still, it could just be Chinese authorities purposefully messing with DNS propagation.
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Dumb and stupid (Score:1)
Cut off some of googles services if your that paranoid etc...
But cut off googles email service when lots of your customers use it is just plain stupid.
But that sums up a lot of what the top guys in china seem to be..
What... (Score:4, Insightful)
“Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.”
This isn't how the internet works.
Re:What... (Score:5, Interesting)
“Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.”
This isn't how the internet works.
Its the way that many non net-neutrality lobyists want it to work. Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.
Re:What... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.
wat. Of course Google pays to have people access gmail - servers, racks, drives, power, transit, staff, real estate all cost quite a bit. Where would they get those resources for free?
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Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.
wat. Of course Google pays to have people access gmail - servers, racks, drives, power, transit, staff, real estate all cost quite a bit.
Chrisq's claim, as I understand it, is that Google would have to negotiate transit with each individual last-mile ISP to make Gmail available to the ISP's customers, or at least available at more than 1999 DSL speeds.
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Then please let me know because I use google apps for business and I have clients in China who I can't afford to lose. I also need to access email when I'm physically in China.
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Then please let me know because I use google apps for business and I have clients in China who I can't afford to lose. I also need to access email when I'm physically in China.
It's funny how these sorts of posts are always anonymous...
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Your post is anonymous too unless your name really is "93 Escort Wagon".
Re:What... (Score:5, Funny)
Martha and I named him after the place he was conceived.
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Dad! You promised never to tell that story!
I hate you!!
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You might reasonably think that. You'd have it wrong, though.
The Great Firewall can trivially stop people from (directly) connecting to Google itself, and can stop Google from sending traffic directly to servers in China.
How, though, does the Great Firewall stop email from going between Google servers in the US
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The bigger concern is that you may not be able to reach any users of the very popular (and state-supported) Chinese services. If you can't do business with people in China through Gmail (and corporate GMail is a significant portion of GMail), you will switch to a provider who does. Or Google figures out a workaround.
In other words, it's a real concern, but not one I would lose a tremendous amount of sleep over. I'd much rather worry about Chinese hackers absconding with my data than about the Great Firewall
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How, though, does the Great Firewall stop email from going between Google servers in the US, and Yahoo/Microsoft/etc servers in the US? Short answer: It doesn't.
If they wanted to? With DPI, which they already do.
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Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.
This isn't how the internet works.
That isn't how the Internet is meant to work. But yes, they could theoretically block emails from whichever domains or IP addresses they want to, but this is beyond what they have been reported to have done so far.
To me the question is how does this impact trade and WTO rules and what if any retaliatory steps the US government is going to take against Chinese companies doing business in or trading with the US. Both sides have an interest in promoting free trade, but that requires an equitable two-way r
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but this is beyond what they have been reported to have done so far.
No its not, they were tampering with connections to google in the past based on what search query you entered and forging RST packets if you searched for "illegal content".
DPI is the bread and butter of the GFW; Im sort of astonished at how naieve people are about what they actually do.
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And I would agree that not only are they not doing that, but that they probably wont do it. China's whole MO with the GFW is to subtly punish "deviant" internet users, and reward conformant ones. Blocking email from gmail users would punish both and make their filtering more generally known.
They tend to prefer things like making gMail or google really spotty, slow, or unreliable so it is obnoxious to use without it being obvious that its actually censorship.
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I don't know if that is there MO. Last time I was over (and admittedly it has been a while), the GFW was ISP based. Some stuff would work in one place and not another. I think that sometimes we overprescribe evil genius when the answer is just plain old incompetency.
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They design it to appear sporadic. Generally you have to hit a certain number of "deviations" to trigger a problem, and often things like VPN will work for some short period of time before breaking and bringing your connection to a throttled state.
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Yes it is. They're blocking *everything* from Gmail, including the SMTP traffic. In other words, people with Gmail can no longer send email to or receive email from people in China. People outside China who need to have email to people in China may very well have to switch away from Gmail.
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I don't know that that's true. I can still send email from gmail to my stupid @qq address. Of course I have to be on a VPN now in order to access my IMAP servers at Google, which is new these last few days. Google webmail has been down about 90% of the time for the last year, but sometimes used to work late at night.
This blocking of IMAP (and presumably ActiveSync if Google still uses that, or whatever other proprietary protocol they may use in their various apps) is new.
In my one, single, Chinese test acco
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It's a problem for a few Chinese companies I've seen - their whole company email is hosted on Gmail. (Not Google Apps, Gmail). It's not unusual to see contacts along the lines of Username-Company@gmail.com. Think what you will, but it's a completely logical thing - why spend money on email when someone gives it for free?
The regular Chinese consumer, though I've s
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It's ALMOST Tuesday in China! 22:49!
Re:Hope it is blocked. (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer China's overt censorship to the US version
I invite you to move to China and try making a statement like this, and see what happens.
China's politics and economy are more dynamic than the US one.
They're simply years ahead of us in greed, graft, and crony capitalism.
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I invite you to move to China and try making a statement like this, and see what happens.
Well, I don't live in China, but I've done a lot of business in China, and work with someone who is just completing a PhD in economics while working in China and feeds me a stream of consciousness about the extent of overt and covert state meddling.They certainly don't hide their censorship, let alone have a problem with people complimenting them for it. What would you expect to happen, please?
They're simply years ahead of us in greed, graft, and crony capitalism.
Mmm, no. They're edging from the right gradually toward pragmatic social democracy, while the US (with the exceptio
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All you can infer from my post is that Obamacare isn't "wacko religious neocon", which it isn't.
Re:Hope it is blocked. (Score:5, Informative)
They certainly don't hide their censorship, let alone have a problem with people complimenting them for it
You're naieve. Some of it is in the open, a lot of it is not.
For instance: Ask your average Chinese college student whether they have freedom of religion / speech, and they will say yes. What they often dont know is that you can be arrested for talking to a minor about religion, or talking about religion outside of a state-sanctioned church. Ask the Falun-Gong about their thoughts on Chinese free speech.
Another example, for quite some time the GFW was analyzing google searches for forbidden content, and massively throttling connections with hits. Google posted an alert on their search page when such throttling occurred, which made the government quite angry. Why do you suppose that is, if theyre quite open about it? Why throttle, rather than displaying a block page?
I can also tell you that it is apparently not common knowledge there that if you text something "forbidden" in China, the government gets a copy.
Its wonderful that you think China is such a free country and that all of the reports of their human rights issues are apparently overstated. Maybe you think Liu XIaobo received his Nobel Peace Prize and was released from detenention, or that his wife has been released-- Im sure they would be thrilled to learn this.
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>For instance: Ask your average Chinese college student whether they have freedom of religion / speech, and they will say yes. What they often dont know is that you can be arrested for talking to a minor about religion, or talking about religion outside of a state-sanctioned church. Ask the Falun-Gong about their thoughts on Chinese free speech.
But practically speaking, the average Chinese college student is correct. They're completely free, that is until they have a high-enough profile to attract attent
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They're completely free, that is until they have a high-enough profile to attract attention
Im not sure what your definition of high-profile is. If you form a house church over there and they find you, you WILL be detained, or deported (if you are an ex-pat), or at the very least monitored. I believe the unofficial threshold for being a concern is a gathering of 15 or more, hardly "high profile".
Not only that, but a vow of atheism is required to have a government career.
No one is ever disappeared for talking to a minor about religion or talking about religion outside of a church.
Many have been detained and deported for it, however, and had congregations threatened if details about other contacts were not
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Ask the KKK about their thoughts on American free speech.
Its perfectly legal to espouse KKK doctrine; ask the Westboro Baptist Church, or the residents of Skokie, Il during the Nazi demonstration.
for quite some time the NSA was analyzing google searches for forbidden content...
There is no official policy for this, nor has the NSA been found to compel anyone to allow SSL MITM without a court order. In fact there is no evidence currently that any widescale SSL MITMs are going on.
I can also tell you that it is apparently not common knowledge there that if you text something "forbidden" in America, the government gets a copy.
Need some evidence.
Don't you have any gripes with your own government?
Of course I do. But you would have to be absolutely ignorant of life in each country and the repercussions of open political speech in each to even
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If my house is on fire, I'm not about to lecture the guy next door about fireplace safety.
The context here is Gmail and China, and Chinese censorship at large. If you have specific gripes about the US government, this is probably the wrong topic for it. Getting mad at me because I am speaking on topic seems quite strange; you were better off going to a different article if you were not prepared to discuss the Chinese security context.
Just to go over your points quite quickly,
1) FISA courts have not as far as anyone knows allowed global MITM of SSL, nor (as far as anyone knows) does NSA even ha
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2) KKK may be "monitored", but they are allowed to speak, demonstrate, organize, and so forth as long as they commit no actual crimes (arson etc).
In the US the KKK is really close to the government. They, and other right wing advocates of violence, get away with a lot of stuff that would end up in big trouble for non-right wingers.
For example, the incoming House Whip, Steve Scalise, gave a well received speech to a white nationalist group in 2002 [reuters.com]
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Watching this kind of demoning from US is humourous and based on zero understanding how how things work.
Watching the 50 Cent Army come out and defend Chinese repression of free speech is certainly interesting. You seem to think that the comments made here are without personal experience, like watching people get deported because they dared to speak something the government objects to. Do the people in Hong Kong right now also not understand how things work? What about Tianenmen Square?
You remark on the supposed inefficiency of the American system, which has been successful in America and the UK for several
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What do you think they talk about there?
Definitely not Tienanmen Square. Or anything else blocked by the Great Firewall.
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Look at this, we have a post on "Chinese censorship" and here is the first reference to Tienanmen square, an event that took place in 1989.
Whoever controls the Past Controls the Present.
Re:Hope it is blocked. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the people I know who were deported for "unlawful speech"-- totally imagining that. Imagining Liu Xiaobo too, and illegal flower ceremony. Tank man? Never happened. Suppression of free speech during the olympics? Definately not.
And all those deals with Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google (since reneged, which is why China is so irked with them) in 2006 to help spy on their users and expose dissidents? Internet myth.
Sounds like you have it all figured out.
1) Do you own a passport?
2) Is your passport stamped with a Chinese entry visa?
Yes, and yes.
In return Id challenge you to stand on a corner and preach the risen Christ, and see how long it is before thugs detain you and give you a 1-way ticket out of the country. Or you could try handing out pamplhets advocating democracy-- I actually saw one of those-- You'd get the same response.]
By the way-- if you are a chinese national, please do not do this as you will get a 1-way trip but it wont be out of the country.
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> In return Id challenge you to stand on a corner and preach the risen Christ, and see how long it is before thugs detain you and give you a 1-way ticket out of the country.
This seems to be pretty common outside of the Chinese faux Catholic churches I've been near. Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing. I say "faux" because the CPA controls the local flavor of Catholicism, and the government really has nothing to fear. Like many things, it's under control.
I'm certainly no China defender (nor a Catholic), but a lot o
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1) China isnt communist, theyre authoritarian (possibly fascist). They stopped being communist after Mao died.
2) 66 million are. Many many more practice falun gong. Im also
3) Just to be clear that stance is incompatible with a belief in freedom of speech. Why are you so afraid of people making up their own minds? You have no problem peddling Mao Zedong worship in school.
Its very interesting that english appears to be a second language, you posted as an AC, and you seem to have an intimate knowledge of
Re:Hope it is blocked. (Score:4, Interesting)
Try talking to people from China more often.
I speak with them quite often, and my acquaintance with China is not casual. I would however be foolish to reveal the nature of that acquaintance publicly, and will not do so; you can either believe me, or not. However I have not known anyone to refer to the church as anything other than "the Three Self church"-- never by its full name, to the point where I had no clue that it had a fuller name.
- I agree with you on the "communism" thing which is why i put it in quotes but tell me what the "official" name of the government party in power is called?
Zimbabwe and North Korea both have "democratic" and/or "republic" in their name, as did the country run by the Khmer Rouge; they are anything but. Technically, China also has the word "republic" in its name, but its a bit of a stretch given that which party you vote for is pre-decided and local rulers (ie Hong Kong) are selected by the government.
As to whether Slashdot is banned in China, I could find out pretty easily, but in any case im sure the 50 Cent Partyhas a special dispensation to bypass the GFW in order to bend opinion.
I do hate to pull out the shill card, but there are a large number of anonymous posts in this thread where the author is both highly defensive of Chinese policy and highly critical of US policy, which is a strategy (changing the discussion, goalpost shifting) officially recommended for the 50 cent party. I keep seeing this same letter (Ã) in their posts, which occurs on the pinyin keyboard, and they use very strange english phrases ("flogging the religion") which I have never heard native speakers use.
I would have to be naieve to assume that there are no Chinese shills here, and your attack on free speech in point 3 jives with the Chinese official stance that "some kinds of thought must not be tolerated".
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... Suppression of free speech during the olympics? Definately not.
...
Just because you presume something, does not make it true.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons. I was an athlete during the games (from a western country). We had been told in no uncertain terms that many things were not permitted to be discussed with the media (or for that matter general public) and sanctions could be applied if they were.
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And now that I hit submit, I realise that I should also add:
These terms were not a standard part of the olympic agreements. Neither Athens or London (the ones either side of Beijing) had anything even remotely similar.
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I was simply demonstrating in stark contrast the difference in "freedom" in China and the US.
As to WHY someone would break the law to evangelize? Peter puts it well:
And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men."
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What if I give you a stack of flyers (of my choosing) and you stand in front of your nations capital and hand them out?
Since you clearly have "free speech" laws and can say whatever you want, you have nothing to fear right?
People do this all the time. If you caused a disruption, it is possible you would be asked to leave.
I witnessed this on a random street in China, where a man was handing out flyers in a public square. Police appeared, the man ran, all flyers were confiscated-- including the ones people were holding. That sort of thing simply does not happen in the US.
Just because i handed you a stack of "hate propaganda"
No such thing. See National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie [wikipedia.org]
Good thing the US has "separation of state and religion" rules for those of us who do not believe in "god".
This is off topic and out of context. He was specifically asking why someone w
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The skokie case was specifically about "hate speech". Nazi demonstrators wanted to demonstrate in a mostly Jewish town -- including speech. The Supreme court ruled that they could.
I also find it quite strange that I ask a question about whether missionaries deserve prison, and you respond with a question about treason. The question about missionaries stands, do you think missionaries deserve prison for simply discussing religion? Do students deserve death for simply asking for democracy?
We're not talkin
Re:Hope it is blocked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Centuries behind us, you mean? What you're describing was more or less standard in the USA in the last half of the nineteenth century.
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Centuries behind us, you mean? What you're describing was more or less standard in the USA in the last half of the nineteenth century.
Think of it cyclically; the past is the future, as it ever was.
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There is very few censorship agreements in the USA. Most of the so called hidden agreements are just the morals of the particular publisher.
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There is very few censorship agreements in the USA. Most of the so called hidden agreements are just the morals of the particular publisher.
And some are laws that allow a publisher to inflict its will on third parties, such as intellectual protectionism/imaginary property laws.
Cutting off your nose to spite your face ... (Score:2)
"Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."
China needs to keep up economic growth, or the people who have gotten used to being "middle class" over the last 15 years will not be happy. So, cutting off ways for small and medium-sized importers in other countries to get product info, quotes, arrange for shipping, etc ... not so good.
And of course, this will also hurt many external alibaba customers.
What next - forcing people to switch to China's dead Red Flag Linux [theregister.co.uk], just to spite the west?
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How is GMail necessary to the growth of the middle class? There's 1.3 billion people who can pick from any other email provider. Compared to creating an OS from scratch, creating and running an email service is trivial.
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How is GMail necessary to the growth of the middle class? There's 1.3 billion people who can pick from any other email provider. Compared to creating an OS from scratch, creating and running an email service is trivial.
Please re-read " cutting off ways for small and medium-sized importers in other countries to get product info, quotes, arrange for shipping, etc ... not so good. And of course, this will also hurt many external alibaba customers".
China's growth is predicated on trade. When you make it harder for the rest of the world to communicate with your small and medium-sized businesses, you hurt your domestic businesses, which impacts on overall growth. China's growth is already slowing, and this is the first time s
Old? (Score:2)
Re:Old? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought so too at first - China blocks access to any and all google services. But then I realized that the article (and title) are poorly worded. What China did (in addition to already blocking access to the actual google services) - is to block any email sent from/to anyone with a mailbox at gmail.com. That is to say - as a gmail.com user, you are no longer able to exchange emails with users of various email services based in China.
That is, in fact, somewhat bigger news - they are breaking an intercommunication capability.
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Does that affect users of the gmail SMTP server or people who use a @gmail.com address?
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I'm not sure SMTP is being blocked entirely. I can still send email between QQ and my Gmail and Google Apps hosted accounts. What's *new*, though, is that I can't access the IMAP servers without being on the VPN. Once the mail leaves Google, though, it's arriving at QQ, and once the mail leaves QQ, it ends up on Google's servers. I simply need a VPN to get to Google's servers.
Yes, Google services (which are primarily web-based or rely on ports 80 and 443) have been mostly blocked for about a year, now, but
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I have just recieved a test email from China to my @gmail.com address and it works no problem.
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just saying....
Are you sure [go.com] about that?
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Not if China blocks the VPN's handshake, as it has been seen to do.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:pump the brakes guys. (Score:5, Informative)
China doesnt use a handful of pf rules, they use a comprehensive array [wikipedia.org] of filtering, DPI, and firewalling techniques. They've been known to actively probe VPN services to determine whether they are allowable, implement real-time updated keyword content filtering, and forge RST packets for any "undesirable" content.
They are also incredibly proactive about nullifying workarounds; ask the Tor guys [torproject.org] how their efforts with e.g. obfsproxy and obfs2 went. Really good at circumventing the GFW for a year or so until it ended up 100% blocked just like stock OpenVPN.
Either way its difficult to defend the idea that China intentionally did this
No, its not, it fits 100% in with their existing (bad) relationship with google.
when google gladly censors their search results and complies with all local regulations.
Your information is about 5 years out of date. Ever since the Aurora hacks in 2010, Google has ceased all cooperation with the Chinese government on that front [wikipedia.org], and has ceased filtering on their end. They have in fact on a number of occasions worked to alert users when third party tampering has occurred, which has led to a number of confrontations with the Chinese gov't. Notably, in June of this year, China completely blocked Google [mashable.com] prior to the TIanenmen Square anniversary.
Google remains a sterling partner of the chinese leadership in their quiet, tacit business participation in what for all intents and purposes amounts to a capitalist dictatorship with a communist logo.
Except for the part where they are the one major internet company NOT cooperating with them, while Microsoft and Yahoo continue to do so. Hope you dont use Skype [unm.edu] over there.
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Either way its difficult to defend the idea that China intentionally did this when google gladly censors their search results and complies with all local regulations.
They apparently stopped doing that a while ago. [blogspot.com]
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” Google wrote in a lengthy blog post. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
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Maybe (Score:2)
Google services have been blocked for years in Chi (Score:2)
Google services, including Gmail, have been blocked for years, in China. Sure, a lot of Chinese use them with VPN, but Gmail being blocked in China is old news!
For some "strange" reason, Bing and Hotmail aren't blocked, though.
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Time to divert investment away from China? (Score:2)
What if Apple were to move its manufacturing to India, for example? Do Apple fanatics really need to prop up a dictatorship (oligarchy) so they can have their latest "iWantThat"? The same goes for the other tech toys made in China. Lots of people are willing to fork over money for "fair trade" coffee, but don't think twice about where their latest gadget comes from.
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If you're going to play the oligarch card, trying to cast primary blame on the peasants/consumers avoids the real issue. There is class warfare going on, but only one side knows it's a war. Right now the peasants are clueless, so they always loose.
China? (Score:2)
I didn't even know China users could use Gmail. I always thought it was blocked.
The great FIREwall of China! (Score:1)