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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Google+ Now DNS Blocked in China

[UPDATE: Information below is from 2011. More recent post (January 2012) on access to Google+ and other websites in China can be found here: Not Black & White: Access in China to Amazon, Facebook, Google+, Windows Live, Yahoo! and More.

4 previous updates are at end of this post.]

As of about 9:30pm, Tuesday, July 5 in Shanghai, China my experience accessing Google+ has changed.

At the moment, when I try to access Google+ using a local DNS server I am not able to connect.  Once, I was able to get to the login page, however I was not able to get any further.  Other times, I couldn't even get to the home page at plus.google.com.  I waited for over a minutes on several occasions with no success.  Normally, the browser would indicate it could not connect and stopped showing any activity.

I was, however, able to access my Gmail account at the time.

When I switched to a non-local DNS server I was then able to access Google+.

So, at the moment it appears that Google+ is DNS blocked, at least for the local DNS server I tested.  As I mentioned before, this is one of the easier blocking methods to get around.  However, many in China may not be aware that their inability to connect to Google+ could be resolved by changing their DNS server (and some won't realize there is any issue if they are already using a functioning non-Chinese DNS server).

For more information on my most recent previous experience accessing Google+ from China see here - at that time I could access Google+ though a local DNS server but it was much slower than using a non-local DNS server.  For my first experience and more information about blocking through DNS see here.

I'll check again in a few hours and provide another update

UPDATE 1: As of 2am, Wednesday, July 6 the situation remains as above.  I cannot access Google+ using a local DNS server but can using a non-Chinese one.

UPDATE 2:  Around 11:30pm on July 6, I was able to access Google+ while using a local DNS server.  More here.

Added note: The Shanghaiist here earlier on Wednesday also noted that Google+ was blocked in China.  At that time...

UPDATE 3: Between 3-4pm on July 7, Google+ is once again "DNS-blocked" using a local DNS server in Shanghai, China.  I tested on multiple browsers in two different locations with the same results.  Again, switching to a non-Chinese DNS server resolves the problem.

UPDATE 4:  Any future updates will be placed here:  "Access to Google+ in China".

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