China Internet Access - Need VPN?

[maddiepaddy]

I am headed to China and am wondering if I should get a VPN set up before I go? I will need access to Logmein to stay in touch with work, gmail, and online banking. I'm not only worried about not being able to connect, but also about security especially when accessing online banking. Any thoughts?

ETA: I am traveling with Ipad and Iphone only. 

[iammalcolmx]

origami help her out here. I remember you having a terrible time in China and hardly being about to send Whatsapp messages

[GilliC]

Are you moving there? If so, I would check out some of the China-specific ex-pat forums to get recommendations for a VPN or IP spoofing service that works well these days, since things change fairly rapidly.

I was only there for a year, so I never really bothered setting anything up. When I needed to use Wikipedia or something, I would just use a free online redirect site like anonymouse.org/

But I never had a problem with my US banks being blocked. It was mostly just social media and some news sites, so the free sites worked fine. As for the security, a Chinese cracker wouldn't have much advantage simply because you were physically in China. The signal could be intercepted anywhere in the world. Sure the service provider could be (and probably is) compromised by the government, but they're not really interested in your bank account or work mail. Unless you happen to work for US intelligence, a major political or human rights organization, or are an executive at a huge international company. In that case, you might ask about their security policies in this kind of situation. But even then, most of the snooping and censorship is fairly automated, so as long as you avoid the anti-Chinese-government buzzwords, you'll probably just fly under the radar anyway.

[GilliC]

Remembered one more thing: At the time, my website was hosted on a shared server, and that particular company had gotten blocked, so I couldn't access my own site without redirection. After a month, that was too much of a nuisance, so I moved to another company. (I asked around to find out what companies some other ex-pats were using.)

[origami]

I have a VPN with Private Internet Access and yes I had a terrible time getting it to connect to PIA's American servers. The only connection I could make was with their German servers. That was fine for FB, and maybe it would be fine with Logmein (not sure), but it meant I couldn't access Netflix, or any of my streaming tv show sites. Well I could but the only way I could figure out how to do it was to use the German servers for my VPN and then a free proxy server in the US, which was ridiculous and slow. I didn't really care about security there so I can't help with that. I don't think you'd have anything to worry about if you use a VPN, but I'm not sure what their gov't is capable of WRT snooping on foreign servers. I agree with the pp that they don't care about your personal banking or email unless you are doing anti-gov't things. I also agree to lurk in some Chinese expat forums to see if there are VPN companies with more accessible server lists in China. I had access to my email accounts without a VPN. I don't think I ever tried to login to my bank account but the expat forums would have more info on what's blocked and what isn't.

ETA: forgot to say that I never did figure out how to correctly connect my ipad/iphone to my VPN. (it works perfectly in the US.) It only worked on my laptop. My mobile devices connect to the VPN differently than a computer and for some reason it just wouldn't connect to anything. So don't use PIA if all you have are mobile devices.

[maddiepaddy]

Thanks, all. Not moving there, just going for a couple of weeks and I'd like to not be totally disconnected from work. I thought I had read about online banking being a security issue there from a hacking POV, not so much due to gov't surveillance, etc. Maybe my fears are unfounded though.

[GilliC]

Jun 4, 2014 14:38:03 GMT -5 maddiepaddy said:

Thanks, all. Not moving there, just going for a couple of weeks and I'd like to not be totally disconnected from work. I thought I had read about online banking being a security issue there from a hacking POV, not so much due to gov't surveillance, etc. Maybe my fears are unfounded though.

There are some excellent crackers in China, but they're just as dangerous anywhere else in the world. Any cracking techniques that are specific to Chinese ISPs are probably going to target Asian banks, because there isn't really much traffic to US banks.

Plus, it's much easier to just take your credit card info from an online retailer and run up as many charges as you can before it's flagged (or sell the numbers in bulk on the black market). Banking has much higher security, and a lot of online retailers have atrocious security. And it's easier to just phish for banking info than to actually crack it. Why break through a bank's security when so many people can be tricked into handing over their (or someone else's) credentials?

[maddiepaddy]

Jun 4, 2014 15:03:33 GMT -5 GilliC said:

There are some excellent crackers in China, but they're just as dangerous anywhere else in the world. Any cracking techniques that are specific to Chinese ISPs are probably going to target Asian banks, because there isn't really much traffic to US banks.

Plus, it's much easier to just take your credit card info from an online retailer and run up as many charges as you can before it's flagged (or sell the numbers in bulk on the black market). Banking has much higher security, and a lot of online retailers have atrocious security. And it's easier to just phish for banking info than to actually crack it. Why break through a bank's security when so many people can be tricked into handing over their (or someone else's) credentials?

I just realized that 'cracker' in your first response = 'hacker'. Duh! Anyway, yes, this makes sense, thanks! GilliC

[treschic]

I have traveled to China several times for work and have never had an issue with work email, banking sites, etc when using wireless interent on my pc, ipad or iphone. The main things you cannot access in mainland China (HK is fine) are facebook, pinterest, anything that has "blog" in the web address and youtube. I believe gmail and yahoo mail should both work.

I did have an issue with having my credit card # stolen shortly after I returned once but that could have happened in the US before I left. I would just try to use credit cards and not debit cards if at all possible.

[GilliC]

Jun 4, 2014 15:29:50 GMT -5 maddiepaddy said:

Jun 4, 2014 15:03:33 GMT -5 GilliC said:

There are some excellent crackers in China, but they're just as dangerous anywhere else in the world. Any cracking techniques that are specific to Chinese ISPs are probably going to target Asian banks, because there isn't really much traffic to US banks.

Plus, it's much easier to just take your credit card info from an online retailer and run up as many charges as you can before it's flagged (or sell the numbers in bulk on the black market). Banking has much higher security, and a lot of online retailers have atrocious security. And it's easier to just phish for banking info than to actually crack it. Why break through a bank's security when so many people can be tricked into handing over their (or someone else's) credentials?

I just realized that 'cracker' in your first response = 'hacker'. Duh! Anyway, yes, this makes sense, thanks! GilliC

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't want to offend anyone, so I used the less-common but more-accurate term.
(www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/hacker-vs-cracker/)

[maddiepaddy]

Jun 4, 2014 16:00:31 GMT -5 GilliC said:

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't want to offend anyone, so I used the less-common but more-accurate term.
(www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/hacker-vs-cracker/)

Interesting...I had no idea!