China authorities completely blocked Gmail

China authorities completely blocked Gmail, Google’s postal service, on its territory. It is reported by Reuters with reference to the non -profit organization Great Fire.

For many years, access to the Gmail website for users in the PRC has been closed. However, the residents of China could work with the Google postal service using customers like iOS Mail, Thunderbird and Outlook by IMAP (Internet Message Protocol) and Pop3 (Post Office Protocol 3). Now the only way to gain access to Gmail is to use a virtual private network (VPN).

Since the summer, almost all Google online services have been severe censorship in China. Apparently, the country's authorities decided to forcefully transfer web users to local alternatives to foreign Internet services-they are easier to control. In addition, the blocking policy can be explained by protectionism in relation to Chinese technological companies that could experience great pressure from world leaders.

In recent years, China has been heading a list of states that practice extensive political censorship of the Internet. The cyber police team monitors and blocks the resources that are objectionable to the authorities within the framework of the special government program "Golden Shield", which is informally called Great Firewall of China ("Great Chinese Firewall"). Under the pretext of fighting the propaganda of violence in the list of suspicious sites in the PRC, Google, Wikipedia, BBC, Blogspot.com and others are found. The country also blocked the social network Facebook and the Twitter microblog service.

In 2010, Google appealed to the governments of the United States and European countries with a request to put pressure on China and remove the Internet censorship . According to representatives of Google, this is a violation of free trade rules. Earlier, Google redirected search queries from his Chinese site Google.cn to the Google.com.hk portal due to the fact that China limits freedom of speech on the Internet. In particular, the company complained about blocking the sites Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger.