Jun 17 2008
Anonymouse proxy now blocked in PRC
The well-known (to our regular readers) Chinese media site Danwei linked to a Shanghaiist article that the Anonymouse proxy servers have been blocked in the PRC (along with comedycentral.com apparently). From the article:
It’s finally happened: Anonymouse.org, the proxy service that many of us use to access blocked websites and surf the Internet anonymously, has been blocked by Net Nanny. Shanghaiist first noted it at 10:30PM last night Shanghai time, along with the block of ComedyCentral.com. While the decision to block Anonymouse is self-evident (okay, sort of), we’re not completely sure why ComedyCentral got the axe. In the mean time, Shanghaiist suggests using alternative proxy services ProxyChina or Hack520.
Commenters noted that the Hack520 program is the same as the well-known Ultrasurf/Ultrareach system and that although the client program works to anonymously proxy surfing, one needs to use another proxy to get to the download site to get the client to begin with.
One of the best client anonymizers out there is TOR, which also still works in the PRC. Interestingly enough, there are many TOR exit nodes inside the PRC, which leads me to wonder: Why would anyone who uses TOR (political dissidents, journalists, pr0n surfers) want to be proxied into a country that most people are trying to get proxied out of?
8 Responses to “Anonymouse proxy now blocked in PRC”
Reading from Wikipedia, ironically, the TOR website isn’t even blocked in China. I’ll be in Beijing over the summer (in time for the Olympics) and it’ll be a big of a challenge to blog since it has been blocked in China. I’m thinking of using my university’s VPN to get access. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?
VPN is one of the most common ways that expats get around the GFW. Everything that I have read indicates that VPN should work fine. Some expats even buy commercial anonymizing VPN services for use in the PRC.
Have fun on your trip.
Oh yeah, don’t be too CNN.
haha, thanks!
[...] reasonably well (though frequently slow) and there are other anonymizer services out there such as Anonymouse and Ultrasurf. James Fallows has Ultrasurf. James Fallows has blogged about using commercial [...]
But there’s loads of proxy on the internet. How to block it all?
There are better proxy systems too. As far as I know, TOR isn’t presently blocked and it would be very easy to block it. Who knows how and why?
I would guess that a lot of the censorship decisions are based on events that occur involving the sites that end up getting censored. Some subversive citizen was probably using Anonymouse to bypass the filters and got caught by some other means.
@ Jumper it’s so easy, they find the port that TOR used and they block all the activity through this port. Easy uh?
@Evader – TOR isn’t tied to a specific port. The easiest way to limit access to it might be to block the TOR directory servers.