Hotmail problems in China
p2p news / p2pnet: Only weeks after Bill Gates warmly welcomed Chinese president Hu Jintao to his home, Net users in some parts of China had serious difficulties accessing Microsoft’s Hotmail email service.
“Persistent problems over the past week have led many Chinese Hotmail users to assume that Hotmail has been added to the long list of overseas websites blocked by the Government,” says The Australian, going on, “Beijing never comments on whether it is blocking sites and it can be difficult to distinguish active government disruption from network problems.”
But, “Ambiguous replies from MSN’s support center have pointed to some kind of temporary technical problem with MSN Hotmail as the cause of the problem, and that it only has an impact on a small group of users with certain systems,” said Interfax China.
Many users had problems logging on, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has Brian Zhou, president of Beijing public relations company H-Line Ogilvy, which represents Microsoft in China, saying. “What we’ve found out is these are network problems, technical problems.”
However, “Although the problem may occur because of Microsoft’s recent update of its Hotmail service, it is possible that the domain name of Windows Live Mail was accidentally blocked by the Chinese government’s filtering system,” an “anonymous network security expert with a Chinese university” told Interfax.
Also See:
The Australian – Microsoft throws cold water on China Hotmail ban scare, May 15, 2006
Interfax China – Hotmail and Windows Live Mail widely inaccessible in mainland China, May 9, 2006
Seattle Post-Intelligencer – Problems with Hotmail, MSN Messenger arise in China, May 13, 2006
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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
May 16th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
You’re posting again. Does that mean you have your libel problem resolved?
May 16th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Nothing has been solved or resolved. So I’m still in a kind of hold pattern at the moment. Given that, and since p2pnet is supposed to be a news site, I figured I’d better post some news : )
Cheers!
May 17th, 2006 at 9:59 am
i’m living in xian, china. i usually have to try accessing hotmail around 10-20 times before getting through and often not getting through at all. the problem seemed to have begun in the last 2 weeks or so. my class mates from different countries studying in china are all having the same problems accessing hotmail. i use internet cafes, but they also use home computers. i generally have more success (perhaps try 1-5 times) getting to my hotmail by first logging into msn.
May 17th, 2006 at 10:01 am
ohh yeah, my name’s aaron. i forgot to fill out the anonymous coward bit. and by msn i meant msn messenger.
May 17th, 2006 at 10:07 am
china also appears to have blocked “the australian” news site because I can’t get through to that either to see the related story. bloody commies.