Dan's Adventure

As I travelled around China, a common problem that I heard in hostels was that people couldn’t access a number of websites including facebook, youtube, blogspot and at times hotmail and gmail. Not the end of the world you may say, but for some it was proving to be quite an inconvenience. People that I met were using a variety of solutions to get around the Great Firewall of China, some better than others. So here are three ways to access facebook in China:

1. VPN – I previously posted an article about how to use a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall of China and suggested using a VPN solution called Witopia. I’m pleased to report that Witopia performed well throughout my time in China, I never had any connection problems and could access every website that I tried.
2. Proxy – Several hostels that I stayed at suggested using a proxy site called secure tunnel as a work around. Secure tunnel appeared to do the job, its a free service, but I would not recommend accessing personal accounts using it. Its probably only a matter of time before secure tunnel is blocked, but there are many others out there doing exactly the same job.
3. Tor – Another solution that I found people using was Tor, a network that routes your connection through other computers, but again this isn’t secure so I would be very wary about providing any login details through it.

If you are planning on travelling with your own laptop in China, I would definitely recommend investing in a VPN solution and getting it up and running before you arrive there. It is by far the most secure and reliable way to access blocked websites.