More VPN Crackdown in China

[WMGroomAK]

While browsing the tech entertainment news this morning, found two articles on new China Regulations to make VPNs harder to access in the country. 

 

http://wccftech.com/great-firewall-harder-china/

As WCCF puts it: "The new regulations posted by the Ministry of IT said that all VPNs will have to be authorized by telecom regulators. The South China Morning Post said that all special cable and VPN services will require a prior government approval, “a move making most VPN service providers illegal.”"

 

https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/23/china-vpn-illegal-internet-censorship-government-approval/

Engadget writes that "China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the new rules on Sunday, as reported by the South China Morning Post. Calling it a "clean-up" of the country's internet connections, the Ministry said the new rules would go live immediately and be in place until March 31st, 2018."

 

While I know that VPNs can and have been used for some malicious activity and to circumvent regional restrictions, this also seems like a fairly strong tactic taken to suppress any attempt at free speech or as another means of restricting information that the citizens can reach... I'm against this kind of intervention in internet freedom as strongly as can be and think that it will be interesting to see what methods come out to circumvent these restrictions.

 

[Will_Man_Dude]

In other news water is wet,

 

but seriously what did you expect from china 

[Mr.Meerkat]

But I won't survive for a month without dimitry's face when I'm there for part of the summer ;-;

At least I have Linus's on floatplane  

[WMGroomAK]

7 minutes ago, Will_Man_Dude said:

In other news water is wet,

 

but seriously what did you expect from china 

Not much from China... This does appear to be par for the course, but it is disconcerting when you see governments try to control the access to information.  It makes the propaganda games that much easier when you're the only voice out there.  Also, people being people, there is always someone who finds a way to circumvent the system so who knows what may come out of it.  I guess it also serves as a warning on what we should be watching out for in our own countries and trying to make sure doesn't happen.

[Nfan]

Good old days of Internet are gone. People with legacy minds are building country borders there. Some don't really hide the reasons for that like China. Some can't cope with problems in real life, and It's easier fot them to say that closing communication means for terrorists or closing unappropriate website will somehow help.

 

And so popular today Server-Client architecture helps these people to make their wiches come true. Because easy to close one stable connection. Moreover their servants watching Netflix on their drm enabled kaby-lake PCs are bringing the new Dark Age closer. 

 

Meh.

[dmegatool]

Can they use services like LiquidSky ? ...which let you control a remote PC (It's for game streaming, like onLive or GeForce Now) . It's not technically a VPN. What a country to live in... 

[Dionyz]

Good. Hopefully it will stop most VPN's. I hate these Chinese gold botters. They ruin every game's currency.

[Doobeedoo]

Hm VPN being illegal huh.

[CoolMarquis97]

Have been to China for 2 weeks and the absolute worst was when you had a question and wanted to google it .... only then to realize google is banned. 

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, CoolMarquis97 said:

Have been to China for 2 weeks and the absolute worst was when you had a question and wanted to google it .... only then to realize google is banned. 

how can you be in the linustechtips forum and not have tunnelbear on all your devices?

[CoolMarquis97]

51 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

how can you be in the linustechtips forum and not have tunnelbear on all your devices?

I tried it for a month but really didn't like it. It seemed to mess up my internet connection and constantly disconnect/reconnect. 

[Trik'Stari]

Oh look, yet more human rights violations from a country that is in fact one giant human rights violation.

 

I do not see why or how they are allowed membership in the UN, and why or how we EVER started trading with China. It was an absolute mistake that we now have to deal with.

[Trik'Stari]

On 1/23/2017 at 9:30 PM, huilun02 said:

Hows China gona keep up with censorship if they want the country to progress and their citizens become smarter?

Because that's not how communism works. Communism is not progressive, despite what many college students and professors would claim.

 

Communism makes slaves of everyone, the same as hyper-capitalism (oligopolies and oligarchies). You are not allowed to become better than what the state allows you, because someone else might fail to become better and that would be "inequality", the ultimate boogieman.

[Trik'Stari]

1 minute ago, huilun02 said:

Then they shoot themselves in the foot by stifling their own development. 

Hopefully that becomes reality.

 

Hopefully, the Chinese people rise up against the communist regime, and forgive the rest of the world for taking advantage of what a communist regime will do to it's own people in order to benefit themselves.

[Misanthrope]

Does LMG target Taiwan only?

Spoiler

*Dennis voice* Taiwan number one! 

Or are they getting through the wall with proxies too? 

[Bensemus]

20 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

why or how we EVER started trading with China. It was an absolute mistake that we now have to deal with.

cheap labour and goods which are out of sight.

[Litargirio]

46 minutes ago, Kumaresh said:

Will China be able to circumvent services like Tor though ? Anticipating such things would happen, many people might have hard copies of the Tor browser which could easily be distributed everywhere. Or will they go so far as to look up EVERY single person who has looked up Tor or any form of VPN

Well, they can't really completely prevent people from using VPNs, only prevent them from downloading them, and maybe block connections to known VPN IPs (which are not static anyway). But you can simply have an installer on a USB stick and pass it around, allowing people to install the client without having to download it.

 

On 1/26/2017 at 1:34 AM, CoolMarquis97 said:

I tried it for a month but really didn't like it. It seemed to mess up my internet connection and constantly disconnect/reconnect. 

I would recommend Astrill, if you ever need a replacement. Been using it for a year, and has worked very solidly for me.

[captain_to_fire]

They probably use the technique called Deep Packet Inspection to block VPN access. Fortunately, some VPN services have already defeated DPI by scrambling OpenVPN connections which makes it harder for DPI to detect. Good thing though Tunnelbear has the Ghost Bear feature to do that but currently on available to PC, Mac and Android. iOS at the moment doesn't support OpenVPN. 

 

Further reading: https://www.bestvpn.com/how-to-bypass-vpn-blocks/

[AlTech]

On ‎1‎/‎26‎/‎2017 at 7:43 AM, suicidalfranco said:

how can you be in the linustechtips forum and not have tunnelbear on all your devices?

Because tunnelbear does not support all of my devices and has not won me over vs just not using a VPN.

[Teddy07]

On 23.1.2017 at 10:19 PM, Dionyz said:

Good. Hopefully it will stop most VPN's. I hate these Chinese gold botters. They ruin every game's currency.

Indians, Pakistanis or whoever will take over.

[BuckGup]

People complain about the whole #banmuslim thing but America isn't that bad. It is bad but not China bad

[mrchow19910319]

On 24/01/2017 at 10:30 AM, huilun02 said:

Hows China gona keep up with censorship if they want the country to progress and their citizens become smarter?

Which country want the citizens become smarter??? 

The dumber the citizens the easier to control them. 

Create a topic, let them fight, then the ruler sitting there watching them.

[mrchow19910319]

On 26/01/2017 at 7:43 AM, suicidalfranco said:

how can you be in the linustechtips forum and not have tunnelbear on all your devices?

Funny story though, tunnel bear does not work in china that well. You can't even log in.