YJ just sent me a new fix that seems to work on ALL blocked sites in China, even system-level blocks. It’s called Hotspot Shield by Anchor Software and appears originally designed to hide IP addresses and other information for travelers using WiFi in airports and the like. The ability to view blocked sites seems to be a pleasant–and very useful–side effect.
You install the program and it appears as an icon in your toolbar. When it’s activated, it seems to be able to skirt its way around most blocks. I just tried China Digital Times, it worked fine and YJ even used it to view Duowei News, a site that previously had been unviewable by any other means that we’ve tried. It appears to allow users to leave comments and use sites as they normally would.
Now for the bad news…when using Hostpost Shield, it does have a bothersome pop-up that appears at the top of your screen. This can be easily closed, but it’s kind of annoying. Also when I was installing it, my protection software kicked out a piece of Adware software that seemed to be attached. The pop-up is no less annoying then the anonymouse free version software that I had been previously using but it appears at the top of all sites viewed with that browser.
If anyone else tries it, let me know how it works out for you.
7 responses so far ↓
1 無名 - wu ming // Sep 19, 2007 at 1:04 am
y’know, if you were running safari on a mac, you could block that popup.
just sayin’.
2 花崗齋之愚公 // Sep 19, 2007 at 9:31 am
And if I still lived in Russell Park, I wouldn’t have to worry at all…coulda, shoulda, woulda.
3 chriswaugh_bj // Sep 20, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Tried it, didn’t work. I’m not sure if that’s because when I opened it it decided Tencent Traveller should be my default browser or if it’s because I was using the university network. Maybe I should install it on my laptop and try it over the CDMA.
And if we were running safari on a mac, we’d have a hell of a lot of trouble finding decent service should anything go wrong.
4 Brendan // Sep 22, 2007 at 2:23 am
Actually, the popup does show up in Safari, because it’s a frame rather than a popup window. It’s obnoxious in principle, but not actually that intrusive, and since this seems to work a lot more transparently than the Witopia VPN connection that I paid for a while back (and for which Mac support is nonexistent), I reckon I’ll probably make this a pretty regular tool. Thanks for the heads up, J!
5 Leah // Sep 22, 2007 at 6:00 am
I just tried this (PC, Firefox) and, once connected, it had the weird side effect of disabling my Internet connection altogether.
I haven’t restarted my machine post-installation yet…
6 花崗齋之愚公 // Sep 22, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Neither YJ or I have had many system issues since we started running it. I’ve also found that if I turn it on for a little while and then shut it off, I’m still able to browse beyond the GFW. Not sure why that is.
I don’t think it’s the magic catapault, but it certainly has been another useful tool in my anti-GFW arsenal.
7 lynn // Sep 26, 2007 at 8:39 am
Just use Tor. It’s free, OSS. It will do the trick.
tor.eff.org
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