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sdried · Joined: 06 Dec 2011 Posts: 12 Location: Chicago

Are internet restrictions in Vietnam as onerous as those in China? (Please resist the temptation to make snarky observations on social media. I'm not ashamed to use Facebook and Twitter to stay connected to my friends/family). Should I expect to find ordinary internet news outlets blocked?

1st Sgt Welsh · Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 4:36 am Post subject:

From what I've heard Vietnam is not as oppressive when it comes to internet censorship as China. I'm not convinced that this is because the Vietnamese Government have more tolerant attitudes when it comes to freedom of information than the Chinese. I suspect they are just less organized Rolling Eyes

.

I personally don't know anything about twitter but Facebook is an interesting case. I couldn't use it through regular internet for ages then suddenly, for some reason, it worked. However, friends who live in other districts in Saigon still can't access it through normal internet. I don't know why this is the case but there you are. Anyway when I was having trouble with FB I just used Tor. Here's the link to download a tor browser if it you need it:

https://www.torproject.org/

sdried · Joined: 06 Dec 2011 Posts: 12 Location: Chicago

Thank you for the advice. Is there any problem with Skype? I could live without FB and Twitter, but I have to be able read the news!

LettersAthruZ · Joined: 25 Apr 2010 Posts: 466 Location: North Viet Nam

sdried · Joined: 06 Dec 2011 Posts: 12 Location: Chicago

Woohoo! Vietnmam, here I come! Or do you have any warnings you suggest I be appraised of?

Dekadan · Joined: 09 Dec 2011 Posts: 95

Facebook is an issue to get on at times. At first I was able to get around it by changing my ISP, but that stopped working at around the time of the Arab Spring (hmm, I wonder why?). After that, I was using TOR to circumnavigate it, but that has some risks associated with it, plus it's slow.

As for Skype, I never had a problem using it, however the connection was typically slow and resulted in blurry images, dropped calls, electronic voices, etc.

1st Sgt Welsh · Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 12:27 am Post subject:

Dekadan · Joined: 09 Dec 2011 Posts: 95

I used TOR for about 7 months and I didn't have a problem with it, except for the slowness. The potential problem with it is that anyone can sign up to be a node (or whatever they're called). If there's an unscrupulous person, from what I hear, it's pretty easy to hack your computer. That's why I mentioned that there are risks involved.

imjustme · Joined: 26 Jan 2012 Posts: 28

Here in China I use Webfreer for most of my browsing. It gets me into Youtube and most other blocked sites, with occasional proxy failures, but enough reliability and speed to make it worthwhile. What I most like is that it's free of charge (if possibly run by the CIA, who knows?): http://www.webfreer.com .

You can also use a free VPN out of Japan available here: http://www.packetix.net/en . Just a little bit time-consuming to set up, but then works fine. Only trouble: stops all my torrent traffic, which is why I normally use Webfreer, which only encrypts browser traffic, leaving everything else alone.

I used Proxpn's freebie version for a while (with limited though fairly generous speed caps), but that's seemingly getting interfered with now up here.

It sounds as though you're less interfered with in Vietnam, one of my many reasons for considering the move south.

Any other ideas, meanwhile, on free ways to circumvent censorship online?

bon527 · Joined: 23 Aug 2011 Posts: 13

I can access Facebook now (and I'm assuming it would allow access to other sites as well) in Saigon after downloading Hotspot Shield, the free version, at the following link: http://hotspotshield.com/

There are some annoying ads, but those are the breaks!