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Outrunning China's Web Cops

Posted by Zonk on from the watch-out-for-replicants dept.

conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting story on an outfit, DIT, that provides people in China access to censored sites. To do this, 'the company distributes software, called FreeGate, which disguises the sites a person visits. In addition, DIT sends out mass e-mails to Chinese Web surfers for clients such as VOA, which is banned in China. The e-mails include a handful of temporary Web addresses that host off-limits content and springboards to other forbidden sites.'"

3 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Could it not be a "honeypot" operation? by CyricZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How are users in China supposed to be assured that this isn't just a honeypot-style operation, meant to catch users who wish to access content the government there wishes them not to access?

    Not that I'm suggesting this is the case, by any means, but one would have to be quite trusting (or at least willing to face the consequences of getting caught) to use such a system.

    --
    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
  2. Re:Solution? by MoxFulder · · Score: 4, Interesting
    IMHO the solution would be to stop the censorship, not find other way around it.


    Unfortunately, that doesn't usually work in countries ruled by repressive Communist regimes :-) That's why people take up dissident activities like subverting the Great Firewall.
    --
    My bicyles
  3. Re:Somebody will fall for this! by nihaopaul · · Score: 4, Interesting

    why would anyone block http://freebsd.org/ ?? china does, why would anyone block sourceforge.net?? china does, why would anyone block news.bbc.co.uk and not cnn.com ?? ask china... so many sites are blocked, i speak of this from inside china.

    and why doesn't slashdot.org provide https://? so we can post these comments without tor?