skype Posts

Feb192011

Posted By
Steven

A guide to using an Android smartphone in China, and how to get paid apps

Qiyi app for Android, shown on a Galaxy Tab

I’ve been enjoying my past few months of being a new Android user; but residing in China entails some frustrations and difficulties in getting the most out of your Google-powered smartphone – especially with regards a lack of paid apps support, and some popular apps missing from the Chinese version of the Android market. Here are a couple of solid – and legitimate – ways to tackle these two annoyances…

Using Skype in China becoming illegal

Usually I love living in China, thirstily drinking the kool-aid that this place is changing for the better, improving a little bit every day. Sure it has its warts, but compared to 5 years ago, 15 years ago, 35 years ago… it’s definitely improving — right?

Then Youtube gets blocked, Facebook and Twitter follow, as do pretty much all major UGC/SMS sites. Ok, ok, it’s a complete pain in the ass, seems totally backwards and is making the country look more like its paranoid DPRK neighbours than a major player on the world stage. But maybe things were getting a little too out of hand with free speach 2.0, and the whole system needed to be throttled a bit to keep Zhongnanhai comfortable with modernization.

But this is just getting ridiculous:

Shanghai Daily: The Chinese regulator has declared Internet phone services other than those provided by China Telecom and China Unicom as illegal, which is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country.

Chinese Skype privacy breech

skype-censorship A report released on Wednesday exposed the fact that the Chinese version of Skype has been snooping and storing the full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users (along with regular Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users) on publicly-accessible servers.

The report, BREACHING TRUST: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform, was authored by Canadian Nart Villeneuve, of the Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary research and development lab that performs research at the intersection of technology, civic networks, and human rights (and whose site is seemingly blocked in China).

The key findings of the report: