You'd think that Baidu, the largest search engine in China, a multi-billion dollar company, could put in the time and effort to be creative. At least they could PRETEND to try to be creative. I did a search today and saw that Baidu is now doing logo art just like Google. Then I noticed that their site design is just like Google. Colorization? Just like Google. Come on guys! I wonder if this annoys Google.
Are there certain websites such as Facebook and Twitter that you are unable to access from your computer? Duh, you're in China. There are tons websites that are blocked But, there is a solution on how to visit blocked sites in China, and it's not by asking, "Pretty, please…". So read on.
Though tricks like using the IP address instead of the URL work in places like Vietnam and other countries that aren't that serious about Internet censorship, it's not going to work in China. In the past, sometimes, you would be able to visit blocked sites by changing URLs such as www.moumoumou.com the IP address of the site. You can try it again if you like – When on a local computer, using the ping domain.com command returns the IP address. Put this in the address bar and it might just give you access to the blocked site – but probably not.
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In most cases, the URL that you are trying to access will be banned. Actually, China's been known to ban whole lists of URLs just because they woke up on the wrong side of the bed. But you can try converting them to a shorter URL which will help you bypass the settings. There are short URL services available which can help with this. Again, I haven't had much luck with this.
You can even use Google cache. If you are not bothered that the content isn't latest on a website, you can do a Google search for that particular website. Clicking on the cached link underneath the search results can help you access the blocked site. However, Google and China aren't on the best of terms, and a lot of Google Tools are blocked. Plus, Facebook has been blocked for almost 4 years now, so old sites like this aren't going to get unblocked like this
Another technique I read about the other day is using an online translation tool. Sometimes if you translate sites into lesser known languages that version of the site won't be blocked. However, understanding what's on the site will be a problem.
Another technique that most people have been successful in using is the use of IP anonymizer. You may have heard of proxies, web based proxies, rolling proxies, anonymous proxies, open proxies, or stuff like this. In this technique, you have to access a third party site which redirects your request to the required server. Though open proxies are famous for being free, most of them have been shut down in China. There is one particular service that seems to be doing well, which is SecuriTales. It's a paid service, but I've tried it myself, and it's a very quick way to visit blocked sites in China. There's no setup required, and it'll only cost you $6 a month (36 RMB).
Get their FREE trial HERE
The most secure and guaranteed way is through a VPN service. I won't go into the whole "which VPN is the best to visit blocked sites in China" speech, but, I will tell you that VPNs are very handy. I leave mine on all the time. Most sites will have unlimited bandwidth, or limitations that only affect people that download billions of movies every month. Proxies can be annoying because you have to open up the secure browser each time you want to unblock stuff, and they don't work on software running on your computer or apps running on your phone.
Check out the top 5 VPNs in China (My review), or browse the sites for other stats on VPN services that operate in China.
Ah, so if you're coming across this page, you've probably discovered that in the past couple days China's GFW has completely blocked the term "Facebook" from many search engines. Google is a given. Anything like "access Facebook" "unblock Facebook" or even just the word "Facebook" gets you a time-out message, and even after restarting Firefox, clearing your cookies and cache, and flushing your DNS, you're banned from Google search until China sees fit. It really is a "Time Out". Even Yahoo and Bing are acting up, and not giving all the results, or also timing out after several searches for the flagged keyword.
The silly thing is that you can search the term "Face Book" or even "Access Face Book in China" (Face_Book with a space). Does that make sense? No. So in the future, searches for the infamous social networking site will have to be shorted to FB or Face Book to get the latest news on how to unblock them – that is, unless you've got a web based proxy or a virtual private network connection. I've been over it a million times here before, so I'll just leave you to the side bar where you can check out different operating systems, smart phones, and compare prices and features.
Why another post on "access FB in China?" Well it seems that the term "Facebook" has been temporarily (or permanently) banned from Google search. In the past three days I've lost over 400 views on my site. I went from about 1,000 a day to just over 500 in the span of three days. What a bummer. It could be something else, but I noticed to day that the word Facebook made my Google searches automatically time out and get banned from Google searches. So now I may have to use the term "access FB in China" or "unblock FB in China", because that seems to not set off any red flags.
Anyway, you can see on the right hand side that I've got some VPN reviews and comparisons there – you can check them out, or read up on the home page about web based proxies VS VPNs
After continuous testing today, it seems that for the time being, China has banned the word "Facebook" from Google search. Search for "Google", "Gmail", and even "access blocked sites" were all able to be searched and sites were able to be accessed. However, anything containing the word "Facebook" got your search automatically timed out, and banned from Google search, even after cookie removal and DNS flush. Is this a temporary thing or is China pimping up it's Firewall yet again?
I was able to use Yahoo and Bing to search the terms, but a couple searches in a row also got me banned from these search engines. Again, the "no no" word was "Facebook"
Only time will tell.
China NEWS!
China, Google, and Maps
China's Version of Google Maps (article)
Google Maps in China (article)
Great article about China warning Google about what's going to happen if they don't stop making "false accusations".
and another one about "China-US economic cold war"
Yes, a long crazy title – there's alot to cover. I haven't got much to say, but these are some interesting articles you might enjoy about possible Chinese hackers trying to get into the White House, Google blaming China, Baidu profiting from it (and denying it), and of course Gmail being a less and less safe form of email as it comes under frequent attacks
FBI investigates Gmail attacks
Gmail hackers go after White House
Here's a link to a very interesting article I read today. It's about the Chinese Internet being disrupted. Ok, I know this is normal. But what I didn't know is that in some universities, there are Internet connections that are not blocked by the great firewall. They made an interesting point, saying that The Chinese government realized the need for an intellectual elite, and therefore allows many university students the ability to surf "the western Internet".
However, just yesterday many universities all over the countries experience problems with their un-firewalled Internet. Google and Gmail wasn't working.
It also mentioned something about hitting "critical mass" for the amount of blocked web sites requested.
Anyway, I won't recite the article, you can read it HERE.
It's pretty long though. If you're not interested, I pretty much summarized it.
Here's another interesting article about Google in China. I think the most interesting part of the article is that they summed up Google future options in china pretty well
Says it pretty well huh?
Seems like this year, with all the turmoil, and now with the new department for monitoring internet censorship and all internet related topics there's going to be some big changes in the next move. According to this article, even Facebook is making some moves in the Chinese market. Wow. I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg's Chinese name is.
Anyway, some interesting stuff about Google losing face in here. Check it out.
