Zen-O-Matic

The Chinese internet is becoming more and more like a vast intranet, with the Chinese government as god-administrators.

Because I think people should be aware of what’s going on outside their frontiers, and internet is by far the most accessible vector of information, I will show here some way to bypass the great Firewall of China.

Here’s a global explanation of how that stuff works (and yes, my schema’s skill rocks !)

• First method : Web proxies (one shot)

Many services on internet allow users to enter an url then display the content while staying on this page. For that kind of usage, I daily use anonymouse and picidae.

You can find many others here.

This way is by far the quickest and the easiest. However, for frequent usage, it may be not as convenient as the method explained below.

• Second method : Web proxies (frequent)

This one is my favorite. It maybe be complex to realized because you have to have access to a computer in another country, which doesn’t suffer internet censorship, and more important, some linux administration skills.
By installing a proxy server on the remote computer, you can use it like a bouncing point of your internet connection. I installed Squid on a linux server, and I used a user/password based authentication in the squid.conf.

After doing that, you need to tell your browser to use your brand new proxy server. You may use the proxy to access every websites, but it may be slow.

I did a automatic proxy.pac file to use the proxy only if the url is one of the forbidden website. Here is a (working) example :

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
// variable strings to return
var proxy_yes = “PROXY your_proxy_address:and_port”;
var proxy_no = “DIRECT”;
if (shExpMatch(url, “*dailymotion*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*feedburner.com*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*wikipedia*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*gawker*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*flickr*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*icanhascheezburger*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*suchablog*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*bluehost*”)) { return proxy_yes; }
else if (shExpMatch(url, “*youtube*”)) { return proxy_yes; }

else return proxy_no;
}

• Third method : VPN

This method is like the proxy method described above, except this one works for every kind of connection (web, mail apps, instant messaging…). It can be complex but here is a simple way to do that. It’s named Hotspot Shield.

You need to download the application (Windows or MacOS), you launch it, and there you are ! You are authenticated on the US internet, allowing you to surf without restrictions (or to use Paypal, hulu.com, iTunes Store US, but that’s another subject).

Here was presented some ways to more or less easily free yourself from countries censorship policies. If you have other ways, feel free to present them.

Let’s remember that the freedom of speech is one of the Human Rights, and a government don’t have the right to bypass them.

It’s time to get free.