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.
There are many reasons you might want a vpn in China. What are the top five reasons to use a vpn in China?
1. Unblock Social Media and Micro-blogging sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube
2. Keeping a personal blog (or reading others – both business and personal)
3. Entertainment – Both Hulu and Pandora are only available in the USA
4. Keeping in touch with friends and Family – Gmail and Skype may be blocked soon
5. The Chinese government may be spying on your chats and emails
Ok, so maybe I'm just getting carried away, but a vpn is needed even just for general safety at Wifi spots in airports, cafe's, hostels, and Hotels. Have you heard of this new program called Fire Sheep? (read here Fire Sheep) Apparently it's a Firefox application that basically lets you intercept and steal anyone's password who's using the same internet connection as you, i.e. wifi.
So the point is that there are plenty of reasons to get a vpn in China. So what kind of vpn in China might you need? It depends on what you're looking for.
UNBLOCK FACEBOOK IN CHINA'S TOP TWO RECOMMENDED VPN SERVICES
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Cheap vpn's are good for those trying to save money, but they're going to limit you somewhere. They may put caps on your bandwidth (meaning limited downloading and streaming), or they may prevent you from downloading torrents. They may limit your number of server switches or server locations. These may or may not be a problem for you. For example, when I first signed up for a vpn service, I used 12vpn's lite service (no longer available). It was only 30 dollars a year for this vpn in China service, and because I didn't do much with it but surf, it was plenty (limit 10MB bandwidth).
However, because of my blogging and web site maintenance, I found out down the road that these limitation made streaming video from Youtube and Hulu a bit difficult. Also, I used to not care where the server location was, but now that I know how cool Pandora is, I think it's very important to have a server location in The USA. Remember that a vpn in China will change your Chinese IP address to the IP address where your server is located. Most of the time the UK or USA is preferable, but Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, and even Japan are also popular server locations.
What's the price range for a vpn in China? It used to be two bucks minimum but with the recent block of PPTP and L2TP protocols, in China you need an SSL/OpenVpn or SSTP. These are more expensive so you're going to be looking at least five bucks a month. However, you should have to spend more than 15. The ten dollars a month range for vpn in China will get you a Grade A vpn. For an A+ vpn in China you're going to have to spend an extra five bucks a month.
What vpn's do we recommend? The site is full of tips and fact's about different vpn services in China. Take a look around. For now, I'll give you these two
12vpn – Great customer service and a reliable vpn. Super-easy set up
StrongVPN – HIgh quality and great connection speed.