VPNs being banned in China?

[imron]

15 hours ago, WilaDK said:

some gives you 2 hours, and when it's over, you jsut disconnect and log on agian, then you get another two hours, others you get a limited MB or GB per month, but you can upgrade by paying for it.

That sounds incredibly annoying.  I'd prefer to just pay.  A 12 month subscription for ExpressVPN works out to ~$0.30 a day.  I would pay that to avoid the hassle of continually logging in every 2 hours and/or having a cap on data.

[Danili]

The Great Fire Wall is able to detect many VPN protocols such as l2tp openvpn pptp, which means it can block you receiving encrypted packets sent back from  oversea servers.

 

Don't use old-style vpn if you surf oversea webiste in China.

 

 

[Wippen (inactive)]

On 28/10/2017 at 3:15 AM, 889 said:

As well, there are various high-end techniques for identifying and blocking traffic using a VPN. These aren't perfect, but they're good enough to make using a VPN in China difficult for m

But for everybone of these, aren't there always going to be software engineers developing ways around it?  Isn't this also an engineering challenge for some.

[imron]

14 minutes ago, Tøsen said:

But for everybone of these, aren't there always going to be software engineers developing ways around it?

Yes, but for every way around it, there will be software engineers on the other side developing ways around that.  It's like a trace buster buster.

[ChTTay]

Hence cat and mouse ! 

[XiaoXi]

Opening this again to get an update from people on their current VPN situation. I use Expressvpn and the last two days has been the most aggressive attempt to block vpns since I've been in China. For the first time I actually am unable to use my vpn at all for several hours each of these two days. They seem to be battling against the problem hour by hour with frequent updates each day which gives me some access time but not sure whether they can really beat it or not.

 

Just wondering how anyone else is doing VPN-wise and whether it's even regionally localised since I'm in Chengdu, maybe those in other cities are not in such dire circumstances as yet? Or perhaps different VPN providers are better off although it seems ExpressVPN has always been one of the better ones if not the best.

[DavyJonesLocker]

Same issue here in Beijing, last few days  connection has been poor. it's good to see they respond quick though.

It's seems that  different platforms experience problems in different ways. Android not so bad, WIN PC very intermittent if at all. My partners Mac is hardly ever able to  connect over the last few days,   although it does need an update 

 

[XiaoXi]

23 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Same issue here in Beijing, last few days  connection has been poor. it's good to see they respond quick though.

It's seems that  different platforms experience problems in different ways. Android not so bad, WIN PC very intermittent if at all. My partners Mac is hardly ever able to  connect over the last few days,   although it does need an update 

 

Ok I see, so you think it's really much worse than before? I'm not the only one then. You say the pc is intermittent but intermittently able to connect or intermittently unable to connect? I'm on Mac, are you with Expressvpn too?

[DavyJonesLocker]

13 hours ago, XiaoXi said:

Ok I see, so you think it's really much worse than before? I'm not the only one then. You say the pc is intermittent but intermittently able to connect or intermittently unable to connect? I'm on Mac, are you with Expressvpn too?

 

 

In the 4 years I have been in China and using ExpressVPN, the last few days have seemed to be the worse period thus far. By "Intermittent" I mean I can connect only the odd time ( 1 out of 7 or 8 tries throughout the day). Once connected it seems fine (on HK4 or JP1 server) . Today it connected first time but traffic is slow. It has stayed connected for several hours now. If I want to browse the web without VPN I just use a different browser. The ExpressVPN feature of allowing one to connect through specific programs/Apps only , is a nice feature on PC 

 

I don't use MAC personally but my gf is using my VPN (you're allowed 3 connections) and she couldn't connect at all over last few days. However, it does say on the website to update to latest version which she hadn't done.

 

 

[XiaoXi]

15 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

In the 4 years I have been in China and using ExpressVPN, the last few days have seemed to be the worse period thus far. By "Intermittent" I mean I can connect only the odd time ( 1 out of 7 or 8 tries throughout the day). Once connected it seems fine (on HK4 or JP1 server) . Today it connected first time but traffic is slow. It has stayed connected for several hours now. If I want to browse the web without VPN I just use a different browser. The ExpressVPN feature of allowing one to connect through specific programs/Apps only , is a nice feature on PC 

 

I don't use MAC personally but my gf is using my VPN (you're allowed 3 connections) and she couldn't connect at all over last few days. However, it does say on the website to update to latest version which she hadn't done.

Yes I found updating is in fact essential. It seems to be a bit better today. I wonder if they can really keep combatting these stronger and stronger attacks forever. Thanks for sharing, I wonder if we're the only ones though since no one besides us has said anything so far. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

1 hour ago, XiaoXi said:

Thanks for sharing, I wonder if we're the only ones though since no one besides us has said anything so far. 

 

 

Few wechat friends noted it too. I guess people assumed it would be fixed in a day or two but you're right. I think the Chinese seem to be stepping up the defences. Wouldnt be so bad if they didn't block seemingly uncontroversial websites like fitness etc

[XiaoXi]

1 hour ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Few wechat friends noted it too. I guess people assumed it would be fixed in a day or two but you're right. I think the Chinese seem to be stepping up the defences. Wouldnt be so bad if they didn't block seemingly uncontroversial websites like fitness etc

Yes a lot of websites are blocked where you can't see any reason, and even many sites that aren't blocked are extremely slow without VPN due to China having very lines going abroad. Ironically you can probably connect to Japanese websites for example quicker than you could from China. But also due to the huge amount of hackers in China, many websites choose to block China themselves. Like for example, Soundcloud is blocked but I'd bet my life that it's Soundcloud that block China rather than the other way around since they're obviously concerned about Chinese stealing music.

 

Often websites are blocked to eliminate competition. I can't imagine youtube, facebook, twitter and google are blocked purely because of controversial information that maybe on there, clearly they want to push their home grown clones ie youku, baidu, weibo etc.

 

In short, for me a VPN literally IS the internet. Unless you want to watch Chinese tv or go to Chinese news sites that look like they were built 20 years ago there's not much to do without VPN access.