censorship [Update] China tells carriers to block access to personal VPNs by February 1, 2018, [Bloomberg is reporting erroneously]

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, themctipers said:

just use iOS in China (pretty sure iPhones are pretty popular there already )

Carriers can't control shit on iOS

The great firewall can block VPN access whether it's coming from an iPhone or an Android phone

[ewat]

Changing your iPhones language to Chinese does not make it a Chinese iPhone 

For example, Japanese iPhones have a couple differences to them.

Firstly, they don't have Apple Pay, they have the Suica chip inside them. Also, even if you have the phone in vibrate mode and all the volumes turned all the way down, the camera shutter sound and the video record start sounds still play at almost full volume.

 

Here's a video on Wechat. Please note that the section of the video that glosses over "being able to see if the the mall is congested" is a little different to the feature snapchat recently rolled out.

Firstly, in China, it is not opt-out. Wechat broadcasts your location 24/7. Also, the server that logs your location is accessible by the government. Also your name is associated with your tracking file on the server.

The government can see who is where and when at all times as long as they have wechat installed. 

On top of this, Weibo scans through every post and status update looking for signs of dissent or people speaking out against the Government. These posts don't get deleted, just buried so no one sees them.

 

 

[themctipers]

Just now, hey_yo_ said:

The great firewall can block VPN access whether it's coming from an iPhone or an Android phone

Yeah, I know they can..

 

what im saying is that the carriers can't on iPhone because they don't control the OS unlike android. Sure, they can block the ports or whatever but they can't block the VPN if it binds to port 80 or some shit. 

Just now, ewat said:

Changing your iPhones language to Chinese does not make it a Chinese iPhone 

For example, Japanese iPhones have a couple differences to them.

Firstly, they don't have Apple Pay, they have the Suica chip inside them. Also, even if you have the phone in vibrate mode and all the volumes turned all the way down, the camera shutter sound and the video record start sounds still play at almost full volume.

 

Here's a video on Wechat. Please note that the section of the video that glosses over "being able to see if the the mall is congested" is a little different to the feature snapchat recently rolled out.

Firstly, in China, it is not opt-out. Wechat broadcasts your location 24/7. Also, the server that logs your location is accessible by the government. Also your name is associated with your tracking file on the server.

The government can see who is where and when at all times as long as they have wechat installed. 

On top of this, Weibo scans through every post and status update looking for signs of dissent or people speaking out against the Government. These posts don't get deleted, just buried so no one sees them.

 

 

You set the region when you're setting up your iPhone, and that dictates the automatic language and features. 

 

The shutter and video sounds are at full volume because of perverts in China (or at least I've read that somewhere..) recording people  

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as long as they don't have my location information (iPhone, didn't allow it for location, not in China)

[ewat]

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

Yeah, I know they can..

 

what im saying is that the carriers can't on iPhone because they don't control the OS unlike android. Sure, they can block the ports or whatever but they can't block the VPN if it binds to port 80 or some shit. 

You set the region when you're setting up your iPhone, and that dictates the automatic language and features. 

 

The shutter and video sounds are at full volume because of perverts in China (or at least I've read that somewhere..) recording people  

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as long as they don't have my location information (iPhone, didn't allow it for location, not in China)

You misunderstand again.

Firstly, setting your region in your phone doesn't change the phones intended market.

If I buy a phone in Australia and set it's region to Japan, I can mute the shutter sound.

If I buy a phone in Japan and set it's region to Australia, I can't mute the shutter sound.

Region sets the language, and preferred time and date servers. Nothing much else. 

Secondly, you say the carriers can't mess with ios like they can with Android. That's in the US. The laws in China are different. In order to be allowed to sell iPhones in China, Apple had to make some changes to their phones.

[tlink]

4 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

It sort of reminds me of Arab spring when the internet is completely shutdown. Only in China, only selected ports and websites are allowed. I just hope America or any other country won't get ideas from China about revamping the Great Firewall.

 

theresa may.

[laminutederire]

Aren't they just outright banning VPN to sell special Internet line for foreigners and companies, continuing on their grand plot to suck the money of everyone by forcing flaws and turn selling unflawed for bigger profits. Just like when they invented the tool to verify if your cable or charger is bad after having flooding the world with bad ones?

[Denis Rakhmanov]

5 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I just hope America or any other country won't get ideas from China about revamping the Great Firewall.

Russia is thinking about it already. There's work in progress towards the law banning personal VPNs too.

[captain_to_fire]

23 minutes ago, Denis Rakhmanov said:

Russia is thinking about it already. There's work in progress towards the law banning personal VPNs too.

Wouldn't that affect some businesses like Kaspersky Lab who is also selling a personal VPN? In fact, if you download their AV for home users, it includes a VPN capped at 200 MB data and charges extra for unlimited data. 

 

1 hour ago, tlink said:

theresa may.

Does she want a British version of the Arab Spring? 

 

[Denis Rakhmanov]

2 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Wouldn't that affect some businesses like Kaspersky Lab

It will affect a lot of businesses, but our government cannot think further than their nose. They already passed the law that lead to higher internet and cell services prices.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, Denis Rakhmanov said:

It will affect a lot of businesses, but our government cannot think further than their nose. They already passed the law that lead to higher internet and cell services prices.

I'll probably sound evil in this but I'd love seeing the results when governments all over the world wanted weaker cybersecurity under the pretense of national security to backfire at their faces. 

[VerticalDiscussions]

Well, you know they got em eyes closed so they cant see the beauty of a restriction free internet.

 

:#....

[Citadelen]

6 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Is it true? @Citadelen

In a way.

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers.html

At one point the government had plans to block some file sharing sites and wanted to essentially ban encryption at one point. They have a very slim chance of actually passing any new laws of this kind now that they've lost their parliamentary majority.

[wrrls0]

1 hour ago, hey_yo_ said:

Wouldn't that affect some businesses like Kaspersky Lab who is also selling a personal VPN? In fact, if you download their AV for home users, it includes a VPN capped at 200 MB data and charges extra for unlimited data. 

 

Does she want a British version of the Arab Spring? 

 

I think that would just be called an Arab Spring

[mrchow19910319]

7 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

 

Are you still in China? IF so for how long? We need to stay in touch cos I need to know what kind of vpn service is still usable. LOL . 

PM me! 

[tlink]

2 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Does she want a British version of the Arab Spring?

she does want to ban encryption or atleast backdoor them all. and to be allowed to ban services countrywide based on 'terrorism'(biggest excuse for power grab of the current age).

[Red Hardware]

Hi

Wow , that's scary,  what if other countries want to do the same ?

Internet without Google,  twitter, YouTube ,Facebook... is not Internet!  

Even thinking about a day without google is scary. 

Why do they do that ? Their companies  (for example Huawei...) are trying to go international and the government don't let people to go international?  Wow ......

[wrrls0]

13 minutes ago, Red Hardware said:

Hi

Wow , that's scary,  what if other countries want to do the same ?

Internet without Google,  twitter, YouTube ,Facebook... is not Internet!  

Even thinking about a day without google is scary. 

Why do they do that ? Their companies  (for example Huawei...) are trying to go international and the government don't let people to go international?  Wow ......

I'd embrace going back to the days of decentralised web browsing, but not at the cost of the government spying on everything we do.

[captain_to_fire]

53 minutes ago, Red Hardware said:

Why do they do that ? Their companies  (for example Huawei...) are trying to go international and the government don't let people to go international?  Wow ......

I think Android OEMs are selling their phones to China with Google Play services stripped off. So if someone buys an unlocked phone in China and brings it to another country, they might be surprised that there is no Play Store. It's still Android since it's based on the same AOSP but it won't work the same like other Android phones with Google Play services. The best option at that point is to root it and have another ROM installed like Cyanogenmod.

 

53 minutes ago, Red Hardware said:

Even thinking about a day without google is scary.

I wonder what videos Chinese people living in PRC are watching. Their internet connection is way faster than US but underutilized since it's missing a lot of stuff from the west. I know that the Chinese equivalent of Google is Baidu, their Twitter equivalent is Sina Weibo , and their YouTube equivalent is Youku Tudou. It's obvious that the Chinese government wants to spy on their citizens because those three Chinese equivalents all use unencrypted headers/HTTP unlike Google, Twitter, and YouTube which all use HTTPS headers.

Edited July 11, 2017 by hey_yo_

[Trixanity]

3 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

I'll probably sound evil in this but I'd love seeing the results when governments all over the world wanted weaker cybersecurity under the pretense of national security to backfire at their faces. 

It wouldn't though. Encryption would be used by all government agencies but not any private company or citizen. That's how this playbook work. It's in the interest of national security to keep all government data confidential and encrypted you see. Yours though? Nah, we need to make sure you're clean.

[captain_to_fire]

4 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

It wouldn't though. Encryption would be used by all government agencies but not any private company or citizen. That's how this playbook work. It's in the interest of national security to keep all government data confidential and encrypted you see. Yours though? Nah, we need to make sure you're clean.

If there's one thing history has proven, security through obscurity doesn't work. Remember when the NSA kept the EternalBlue and EleternalRomance exploits to themselves in order to spy on people but thanks to the Shadow Brokers dump in Github, it led to a ransomware pandemic namely WannaCry and Petya which once again proves security through obscurity doesn't work. Keeping one's data private doesn't mean you're hiding something or doing something nefarious, it's respecting one's right of privacy. 

[Sauron]

Tor?

[captain_to_fire]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Tor?

I think the Great Firewall of China itself is blocking the Tor website itself. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/

[Red Hardware]

8 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

If there's one thing history has proven, security through obscurity doesn't work. Remember when the NSA kept the EternalBlue and EleternalRomance exploits to themselves in order to spy on people but thanks to the Shadow Brokers dump in Github, it led to a ransomware pandemic namely WannaCry and Petya which once again proves security through obscurity doesn't work. Keeping one's data private doesn't mean you're hiding something or doing something nefarious, it's respecting one's right of privacy. 

Exactly . You can't force everyone to use unsecure stuff and tell them that it's better for their security !! The bad guys who want to do illegal stuff will always find some way to communicate and if governments have backdoors in messaging apps and other things , they will simply think that everything is safe without thinking about the other ways that bad guys can communicate.

The only thing that worries me is that other countries might want to do similar things and that's baaaaaad

[Okjoek]

Not entirely sure I understand. Is this China trying to ban VPNs or something? If so why is that a big deal? I've never felt the need to use one.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

I think the Great Firewall of China itself is blocking the Tor website itself. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/

You can't really shut down tor, at least not permanently. And it doesn't work by blocking a website (by the way that article explains china's technique pretty well). It may end up being an arms race between tor developers/contributors and china.