Snooping on VPN Traffic?

[Chris Ziich]

Interesting read. You can scroll down to the bottom about ExpressVPN.
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=81

Hoping someone tech savvy can chime in.

I am confused by the fact the Chinese government allows this well-known VPN provider (and others) to operate freely in the country.” — most likely these VPN services are permitted to operate with the requirement (voluntarily or involuntarily) to share logs with misc. gov entities; it’s a great tracking mechanism under the guise of freedom.

[Ray]

Been having problems with Astrill this past week….

[Charlie]

This is pretty fascinating, clearly the author has a lot of expertise, so it’s cool to see that. It’s certainly possible that some VPN providers cooperate with authorities, but I can say with certainty that it’s not all VPN providers (and I don’t think it’s widespread, because I think that information would easily be revealed). The question of why these easy-to-identify large VPN services aren’t blocked in China is a good one. Perhaps China knows that a huge number of people rely on them, and the adverse effects of outright blocking them all would be enormous. Astrill must have many, many thousands of customers in China, many of which are very high-value residents and citizens of China. I think there’s a lot of theorizing with few actual answers.

In my experience though, setting up your own VPN is a good idea. It’s not the easiest way to get access to the entire internet, but it does seem to be the cheapest and the safest, assuming you can complete the steps required (there are many free guides available online which you can find via Google).

[Ray]

So today i tried accessing Astrill on Firefox and discovered that Firefox has deregistered the Astrill add-on as being “unsafe” or suspicious. I’m hoping Astrill register a new one with Firefox cos I really really don’t wanna be using IE or Safari. Anyone else had this issue and any suggestions (maybe installing an older version of Firefox?).
Oh yeah, i also got a message from Astrill which was along the lines of “due to some stupid users the IOS app will be down until after the holidays…”. Anyone else get this?
Finally, seems The Guardian is unblocked now?

[Merior]

Sent you a pm Ray.

 

[Merior]

Yes the Guardian does appear to be accessible at the moment.

[Ray]

Thanks Merior. Your suggestion seems to be working 🙂
Avoided a potentially long, grimmer-than-usual Spring festival

[Author]

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