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Gmail in China

May 11th, 2011 Posted in China, Vpn
May, 11 2011
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I haven't been able to access my Gmail in China for about a week now. Now before I say that Gmail is blocked in China, I realize that different places in China produce different results for different people, different computers, and different operation systems.

Google and Gmail in ChinaI've kept up on lots of the VPN services that unblock sites in China, and even those are a bit shaky – it seems that what works in Guangdong doesn't necessarily work in Xinjiang.  But that's another story.

So a lot of users report that they can access Gmail from China in one place, but not the other.  I'm just one of those guys. For example, with my home computer, running Windows XP SP3, using the Firefox 4 Internet browser (English version), I have about a 30 percent success rate as of May 2011.  That means that I'm able to access my Gmail account in China only 30 percent of the time (when I'm not using my VPN).  Of that 30 percent, only about ten percent of the time am I able to access Gmail in it's full form. Most of the time I've got to view it in basic HTML just open my mail.

internet censorship gmail chinaAt my job it's a totally different story.  When I check my Gmail (or attempt to, per say) on the computer at the office, I get about a 5 percent success rate, if that counts for anything at all.  All of the time I've got to use HTML mode, and most of the time I can't even get Google to search properly.  They are using a Chinese version of Internet Explorer – may IE 6 or 7 I'm not sure.  It's miserable.  The good news is that I've got to check out Bing and Yahoo sometimes – an I've found out that my site is pretty much invisible on those search engines – bummer.  It  must be because they censor their search results, because a lot of the articles I've written over the years are also unavailable.

So I use my VPN most of the time.  For me, it's  matter of convenience. If I have to wait for five minutes for the page to load every time I access Gmail in China (which would be several times a day for me), it would add up to HOURS of waiting time per year.  Maybe even days – just waiting for my stupid Gmail account to load.  So I just connect to my VPN account and it a few seconds I can access my Gmail account normally.

You can check out some of the VPN services I recommend HERE or browse the site.

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Can’t access Gmail

April 12th, 2011 Posted in China, Gmail and Google, Internet Censorship, Slow Internet, Yahoo!
Apr, 12 2011
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July 2011 – You'll notice a lot of links that aren't working here on the site.  It seems that in recent weeks, The Great Firewall has had some serious updates, and many of the VPNs featured/reviewed are blocked (at least the sites are). This may not be for the entire country, but at least here in Fujian, many have been blocked.

Securitales is a Web Based Service that is not blocked.  A web based service is different from a VPN, but can also unblock sites in China.  The advantage of a Web based service over a VPN is that you don't have to download anything onto your computer. It works on iPhone, iPad and other smart phones as well as laptop and desktop operating systems like Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The most important thing right now is that it's NOT BLOCKED.

Check out Securitales at www.securitales.com.

I don't know about you guys, but I can't access Gmail, or Google for that matter!  I'm not going to say that the whole of China can't access Gmail, but I've got two internet access points here, one at the office, and one at home.  Either both are on the fritz or China's at it again.  I'm using Firefox at home, and anything I type into the Google search bar gets shot down with a "the server request is taking too long"..but this may be a problem with my personal computer – I've got more viruses than the average person.  The school computer is generally virus free but I think they restored it from the 90's so that's nothing to get excited about either.  Regardless, I'm SOOOOO glad that I have a vpn, because without it i'd have to start using Yahoo for searching.

That's the funny thing, is that I can't access my Gmail account, but Yahoo and Yahoo mail is not  a problem. I started using it to search the other day, and didn't realize how slow Google actually was.  Have you heard about "throttling"?  It's where they limit bandwidth of an internet connection, in this case to make the site slow on purpose.  China does this when they can't block a site completely, but want to discourage users from using the site.  They used to do this with Wikipedia a few years ago, and they do this with Google and Google pages now.  As a webmaster, I use things like Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.  All blocked in China. Or slow to the point of being useless.

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Site Updates

April 6th, 2011 Posted in China, Internet Censorship, Unblock Facebook, Updates, Vpn
Apr, 06 2011
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I've just complete quite a few site updates. After that crazy period when vpn companies were dropping like flies I did a lot of quick-fix site changes including putting big signs in bold and crossing out prices and stuff like that.  Ugly.

But now I'm working with a new blog editor so I'm going to try and pimp stuff up with a bit of color, font, and text size changes.  HTML is such a pain sometimes, but the new blog editor makes it a bit easier.

Part of the update was including 12vpn back on the roster. I know, they've gotten pretty expensive compared to what they used to cost, but their service is still as good as it was before, and seeing as they're now back online in China, and users in China can use their service, I think it's important to note their awesomeness.

Is anyone having trouble accessing their paypal accounts with a vpn? Some guy left me a not saying he's having issues but I can't tell if it's spam or not.  I've never had a problem,

Funny thing about having a blog is that you get SOOOOOO much spam.  Sorry if some of your comments get lots, I get hundreds of pieces of spam every day.

Will keep you guys updated.

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