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China Censorship Communications Google

Gmail Reportedly Has Been Blocked In China 145

Posted by samzenpus from the no-gmail-for-you dept.
An anonymous reader is one of many to point out a report that Gmail has been blocked in China. A years-long war between Google and China that highlights the ideological chasm between the two behemoths has now entered a new phase. On Monday morning, reports confirmed online chatter that Gmail has been fully blocked in China. And transparency advocates say they know exactly what's to blame: China's Great Firewall. "I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google's presence in China and even weaken its market overseas," an anonymous representative of GreatFire.org told Reuters. "Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."
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Gmail Reportedly Has Been Blocked In China More

Gmail Reportedly Has Been Blocked In China

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  • So what exactly is it blocking? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article talks about access to gmail accounts, either directly (web) or via POP/SMTP clients. It then has the quote:

    "Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."

    , which would require blocking server to server traffic (and may cause more problems to China than the rest of the world). Is this what's happening or is it just something to "imagine", or a suggestion to the Chinese government on how to hit google harder?

    • Re:So what exactly is it blocking? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @10:00AM (#48688639)

      which would require blocking server to server traffic

      Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.

      • Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.

        If you mean the SMTP protocol supports chained delivery routes, then I do not think this is true (at least not used in practice). However, business customers of Gmail (at least) can request that a different SMTP server than Google's be used for outgoing mail, and (of course) anyone using an external mail client can send using any SMTP server they like.

        • Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.

          If you mean the SMTP protocol supports chained delivery routes, then I do not think this is true (at least not used in practice). However, business customers of Gmail (at least) can request that a different SMTP server than Google's be used for outgoing mail, and (of course) anyone using an external mail client can send using any SMTP server they like.

          I run a personal mail server and know I know just enough to know that I have vast chasms of ignorance about mail and network rules/firewalls.

          Wouldn't it be easier to filter outbound packets destined for Gmail's SMTP servers and prevent Chinese email users from sending email to Gmail users? (This is an honest question.)

          • Wouldn't it be easier to filter outbound packets destined for Gmail's SMTP servers and prevent Chinese email users from sending email to Gmail users? (This is an honest question.)

            I think you mean Google's MX servers (the remote end when sending email through SMTP). If so, in a word, "yes", much easier, assuming users are using SMTP servers based in China. Indeed, you could simply prevent the connections from ever taking place, simulating authentication errors.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @11:45AM (#48689343)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          China does DPI on basically all connections inside the country.

          Man can't these dumb Chinks do anything original beyond slavishly copying us here in the west?

        • just like NSA does on WHOLE internet traffic

      • Since SMTP allows forwarding by other servers this would require deep packet inspection.

        Or simpler still, it could just be Chinese authorities purposefully messing with DNS propagation.

    • I reckon it is more likely to motivate Chinese private businesses to host their mail outside China. Whatever else you might say about Chinese businessmen, they are very good at keeping their eye on the bottom line. The state sector might not be able to do that, but they are less export oriented anyway.

  • Dumb and stupid (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Cut off some of googles services if your that paranoid etc...
    But cut off googles email service when lots of your customers use it is just plain stupid.
    But that sums up a lot of what the top guys in china seem to be..

  • What... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Njorthbiatr ( 3776975 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @10:01AM (#48688643)

    “Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.”

    This isn't how the internet works.

    • Re:What... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @10:04AM (#48688657)

      “Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.”

      This isn't how the internet works.

      Its the way that many non net-neutrality lobyists want it to work. Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.

      • Re:What... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday December 29, 2014 @11:00AM (#48688991) Homepage Journal

        Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.

        wat. Of course Google pays to have people access gmail - servers, racks, drives, power, transit, staff, real estate all cost quite a bit. Where would they get those resources for free?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Except they have a capitalist vision of google having to pay to have people access gmail.

          wat. Of course Google pays to have people access gmail - servers, racks, drives, power, transit, staff, real estate all cost quite a bit.

          Chrisq's claim, as I understand it, is that Google would have to negotiate transit with each individual last-mile ISP to make Gmail available to the ISP's customers, or at least available at more than 1999 DSL speeds.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Then please let me know because I use google apps for business and I have clients in China who I can't afford to lose. I also need to access email when I'm physically in China.

    • I think it would be simple enough for China to block all incoming email from Google servers/accounts. So ya, that is how the Internet works when you build a giant firewall around your country.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        I think it would be simple enough for China to block all incoming email from Google servers/accounts. So ya, that is how the Internet works when you build a giant firewall around your country.

        You might reasonably think that. You'd have it wrong, though.

        The Great Firewall can trivially stop people from (directly) connecting to Google itself, and can stop Google from sending traffic directly to servers in China.

        How, though, does the Great Firewall stop email from going between Google servers in the US

        • The bigger concern is that you may not be able to reach any users of the very popular (and state-supported) Chinese services. If you can't do business with people in China through Gmail (and corporate GMail is a significant portion of GMail), you will switch to a provider who does. Or Google figures out a workaround.

          In other words, it's a real concern, but not one I would lose a tremendous amount of sleep over. I'd much rather worry about Chinese hackers absconding with my data than about the Great Firewall

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I am not saying that it would not be something you could not get around. The the average user sending the average message would be screwed. Not only is the average email unencrypted but it contained a from address, and i imagine mosy outgoing email comes directly from a gmail server, and is not ping ponged around teh world such that the sender is anonymous.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bigpat ( 158134 )

      Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.

      This isn't how the internet works.

      That isn't how the Internet is meant to work. But yes, they could theoretically block emails from whichever domains or IP addresses they want to, but this is beyond what they have been reported to have done so far.

      To me the question is how does this impact trade and WTO rules and what if any retaliatory steps the US government is going to take against Chinese companies doing business in or trading with the US. Both sides have an interest in promoting free trade, but that requires an equitable two-way r

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bigpat ( 158134 )
          The reporting so far is that access to gmail accounts has been blocked, but specifically blocking emails from gmail.com users to other email accounts has not been reported as far as I know. But I was agreeing that they could technically do so.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • I don't know if that is there MO. Last time I was over (and admittedly it has been a while), the GFW was ISP based. Some stuff would work in one place and not another. I think that sometimes we overprescribe evil genius when the answer is just plain old incompetency.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
      really? If china blocked all incoming email from google servers, you don't think that might force people outside of china who want to do business with people in china to use email services other than google? Are you /certain/ you know how the internet works?

    • This isn't how the internet works.

      Yes it is. They're blocking *everything* from Gmail, including the SMTP traffic. In other words, people with Gmail can no longer send email to or receive email from people in China. People outside China who need to have email to people in China may very well have to switch away from Gmail.

      • I don't know that that's true. I can still send email from gmail to my stupid @qq address. Of course I have to be on a VPN now in order to access my IMAP servers at Google, which is new these last few days. Google webmail has been down about 90% of the time for the last year, but sometimes used to work late at night.

        This blocking of IMAP (and presumably ActiveSync if Google still uses that, or whatever other proprietary protocol they may use in their various apps) is new.

        In my one, single, Chinese test acco

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      âoeImagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.â

      It's a problem for a few Chinese companies I've seen - their whole company email is hosted on Gmail. (Not Google Apps, Gmail). It's not unusual to see contacts along the lines of Username-Company@gmail.com. Think what you will, but it's a completely logical thing - why spend money on email when someone gives it for free?

      The regular Chinese consumer, though I've s

  • "Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail."

    China needs to keep up economic growth, or the people who have gotten used to being "middle class" over the last 15 years will not be happy. So, cutting off ways for small and medium-sized importers in other countries to get product info, quotes, arrange for shipping, etc ... not so good.

    And of course, this will also hurt many external alibaba customers.

    What next - forcing people to switch to China's dead Red Flag Linux [theregister.co.uk], just to spite the west?

    • How is GMail necessary to the growth of the middle class? There's 1.3 billion people who can pick from any other email provider. Compared to creating an OS from scratch, creating and running an email service is trivial.

      • How is GMail necessary to the growth of the middle class? There's 1.3 billion people who can pick from any other email provider. Compared to creating an OS from scratch, creating and running an email service is trivial.

        Please re-read " cutting off ways for small and medium-sized importers in other countries to get product info, quotes, arrange for shipping, etc ... not so good. And of course, this will also hurt many external alibaba customers".

        China's growth is predicated on trade. When you make it harder for the rest of the world to communicate with your small and medium-sized businesses, you hurt your domestic businesses, which impacts on overall growth. China's growth is already slowing, and this is the first time s

  • Isn't this old hat? I was in China a few months ago and could not get to any of Google's services.

    • Re:Old? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ugen ( 93902 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @10:39AM (#48688855)

      I thought so too at first - China blocks access to any and all google services. But then I realized that the article (and title) are poorly worded. What China did (in addition to already blocking access to the actual google services) - is to block any email sent from/to anyone with a mailbox at gmail.com. That is to say - as a gmail.com user, you are no longer able to exchange emails with users of various email services based in China.

      That is, in fact, somewhat bigger news - they are breaking an intercommunication capability.

      • Does that affect users of the gmail SMTP server or people who use a @gmail.com address?

        • At least the first one, got a call a few days ago from a relative whose Gmail account in Thunderbird completely stopped working.

          • I'm not sure SMTP is being blocked entirely. I can still send email between QQ and my Gmail and Google Apps hosted accounts. What's *new*, though, is that I can't access the IMAP servers without being on the VPN. Once the mail leaves Google, though, it's arriving at QQ, and once the mail leaves QQ, it ends up on Google's servers. I simply need a VPN to get to Google's servers.

            Yes, Google services (which are primarily web-based or rely on ports 80 and 443) have been mostly blocked for about a year, now, but

      • I see, thanks for clearing that up, mods well deserved.
      • This is completely false.
        I have just recieved a test email from China to my @gmail.com address and it works no problem.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @10:41AM (#48688869)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 29, 2014 @12:24PM (#48689759)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I'm an English teacher in China at the moment, so let me add some observations to your post. The Great Firewall is definitely noticable on any foreign website, as they load much slower than native Chinese websites whereas I didn't notice much difference between American websites, Canadian websites, and European websites when I was still in the U.S. OpenVPN connections are still viable. In fact, the only way that I can get onto the real Internet nowadays is thanks to the volunteers at VPN Gate and SpeedVPN

    • Either way its difficult to defend the idea that China intentionally did this when google gladly censors their search results and complies with all local regulations.

      They apparently stopped doing that a while ago. [blogspot.com]

      “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” Google wrote in a lengthy blog post. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

  • Maybe they just REALLY don't like Inbox [google.com].

  • Google services, including Gmail, have been blocked for years, in China. Sure, a lot of Chinese use them with VPN, but Gmail being blocked in China is old news!
    For some "strange" reason, Bing and Hotmail aren't blocked, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by u38cg ( 607297 )
      Reportedly, what is being blocked is actual emails from or to a gmail address, not the service. Odd move though.

  • What if Apple were to move its manufacturing to India, for example? Do Apple fanatics really need to prop up a dictatorship (oligarchy) so they can have their latest "iWantThat"? The same goes for the other tech toys made in China. Lots of people are willing to fork over money for "fair trade" coffee, but don't think twice about where their latest gadget comes from.

    • Apple is part of the US oligarchy. Just like European royalty in the 18th and 19th century, today's oligarchs often have more in common with each other then they do with the people of their own country. That's why nothing is likely to happen with Apple in China.

      If you're going to play the oligarch card, trying to cast primary blame on the peasants/consumers avoids the real issue. There is class warfare going on, but only one side knows it's a war. Right now the peasants are clueless, so they always loose.

  • I didn't even know China users could use Gmail. I always thought it was blocked.

  • Oh well... their loss!

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