China and firewalls
I've always wondered this - just how effective is this firewall, against the collective will of a billion chinese perverts wanting to get at porn?

Surely anonymisers, proxy servers and all that stuff I don't really understand, must get a fair number of clued up people around it.

Also, I don't know about the Chinese Government, but I imagine a UK nationwide firewall would be as effective as those age checks at online movie trailers where you just drop down '1' 'Jan' '1901' and carry on.
(Karmageddon, Tue 22 Jun 2010, 12:32, 1 reply)

If you believe the internets
China has the freakiest firewall invented, and also the a massive army of hackers all working for the government.
I have personally seen hacks coming from Chinese IPs. Although, that doesn't mean that the hacks originate in China.
Also had clients having issues receiving email in China and connecting to their VPN from within China.
The problem with most proxy servers and anonymisers is that people need to know they exist to use them, and if people know they exist, then the Chinese government will too. Also, they can easily tell if all your traffic happens to be to a single IP or range of IPs setting off more warning lights.
Although, the firewall is probably penetrable, the act of penetrating is hard enough to make it clear who is penetrating it. Consider if you only sent encrypted emails, since so few people do, it would mark your emails as unusual thereby attracting attention.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Wed 23 Jun 2010, 12:35, closed)