Opera plugs hole in Great Firewall of China
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Opera has sealed the hole its Mini browser tunneled through the Great Firewall of China.
With the international version of Opera Mini - the company's Java-based mobile browser - Chinese users had found a way of freeing themselves from local net filters, accessing sites otherwise banned by the government. The browser shuttles all net traffic through compression servers located outside the country, and naturally, those servers lack Chinese filters.
But on Friday, as reported by the BBC's Beijing bureau, Opera switched all Chinese users from Mini's international version to a Chinese version that uses local compression servers - and local filters.
Chinese Opera users, the BBC says, no longer have access to Facebook.
Opera confirmed the move with The Reg. "The difference between the Chinese and the international versions is that the former connects to compression servers within China while the latter connects to servers outside China," the company said in a canned statement.
"In more direct terms, this means that users of Opera Mini in China are using Opera's servers in China to fetch, compress, and process the Web pages before they are returned to the mobile phone."
The company would not discuss the reasons for the change. But we're assuming the decision wasn't made on its own. Opera did confirm that Chinese users have no choice in the matter. They must "upgrade" to the Chinese version and use the local proxy servers.
Opera says Mini has 35 million users worldwide but it's unclear how many of those users are in China. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Re: Absolute pish
I closed my business here, that has been doing very well indeed. I'm leaving in a month, what else do you want me to do?
All technology companies who were permitted a major presence here many years suck right up to the government.
Somebody like you doesn't understand that the teachings are so successful here, that youngsters and adults are totally unprepared to protest or demonstrate against what they dislike. You're brought up to be told what to do, and although this breeds people with a high IQ due to the comprehensive and exhausting education system, it also breeds people who obey what their parents say, government say, etc.
Sounds like somebody like yourself is incapable of understanding just how successful psychological manipulation is when performed from when the children is a child, just when a child is most impressionable.
Then again, people seem to think democracy is the solution; you only have to look at another large country, America, to see that democracy is also just a fraud, particularly when media manipulation is still used there.
Re: Absolute pish
"Cut a long story short, I am very annoyed that this was not a bug, but just an ill consideration to pander to the censorship loving Chinese government. Bunch of pansies!"
So storm over to the local government office and complain. Tell them what a bunch of pansies they are. Rant that you can't bypass (if I'm inferring correctly that you can't now, given you said "were easily attainable") their filters any more. Or if you can still bypass, rant about how pointless their filters are and how you can get past them. Better yet, do it in the street, so the people can hear and rise up! Maybe the populous Fraser mentions will too. You're in a place where you can effect change, you Tor-using Net Hero. Will you step up to the plate? My guess is you'll probably sign an online petition and consider yourself a freedom fighter. It'd be nice if you prove me wrong, though. Make a nice change from the usual keyboard hardmen on here.
No choice?
It was probably either force the Chinese proxy servers or get the entire service blocked.
While using Opera's overseas proxies bypasses the filter, the filter can still quite easily block those proxies.
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