Friday 30 January 2015

<p> <i> 16.11 pm </i>

China’s Great Firewall Gets Taller

Internet Filter Makes It Harder to Circumvent Blocks to Services Like Google and Facebook

China’s government has unveiled a smarter and stricter Internet filter, riling web users and widening the divide between China’s Internet and the World Wide Web.
A recent upgrade to China’s web filters, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall, has made it more difficult to use services called virtual private networks to circumvent the country’s blocks to U.S. services like Google and Facebook .
Chinese officials confirmed a crackdown on VPNs this week, saying that new measures were needed as the Internet evolved. In the past week, major VPN providers such as Astrill have reported disruptions to their services.
The move is further indication of China’s desire to create a parallel Internet environment that it can more easily control. The web filters serve a dual purpose of screening out content critical of the Chinese government and providing protection for China’s own growing web firms against stronger overseas rivals.
The upgraded firewall also comes as Beijing is calling for U.S. technology companies to submit to intrusive security inspections, according to U.S. business groups.
This time, China appears to have made the blocking of VPN connections more automated and dynamic, said Liviu, who runs a VPN service based in Romania and requested his surname to be withheld to avoid reprisal. Whereas China’s firewall previously blocked connections known to be VPNs, since late last year it also appears to automatically find and block connections that it thinks are likely to be VPNs, he said.
“Now it seems they are doing it automatically,” he said. “You can apply some clever rules for the firewalls that will not trigger blocks.”</p>

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