For whatever reason I (and probably everyone else living in China) am not able to access my Gmail account since last night. If anyone is trying to reach me you can leave a comment on this post and I’ll get back to you.
Not only is Gmail being blocked right now, Google (including even google.com.cn) is also completely blocked for some reason. I wonder what Google did to get the government angry? Or is this just one of those temporary blockages that no one can explain and mysteriously goes away after a few days?
I’ve had good success with Gmail over the past year since moving to China. Until now even when Google.com or Gmail.com have been blocked I have always been able to download my email using a regular email client like Thunderbird. This time – no dice. No access at all and no idea when the situation might improve.
>>> UPDATE: It seems this was a problem with OpenDNS. I turned it off and now both Gmail and Google work. I can’t believe OpenDNS would block Google (that would be suicidal) so I am guessing it was actually due to a conflict between my provider here in China and OpenDNS. China Telecom probably doesn’t like people using DNS other than their own. Who knows.
OpenDNS isn’t blocking those sites. In general, OpenDNS blocks NOTHING but phishing sites, and you can disable that protection if you want. Since it’s unlikely that Google had DNS issues, all I can imagine is that your ISP (China Telecom?) doesn’t like third-party DNS.
John Roberts
OpenDNS
I’m sure you’re right. OpenDNS had been working great for me so it was suprising the ISP (China Telecom) decided to have a problem with it all of a sudden and only for some very specific sites (many sites continued to work just fine). I’ll keep trying OpenDNS because I liked using it and sometimes problems like this with the ISP clear up as mysteriously as they started.
> Update: as of Sunday morning everything is back to normal with OpenDNS and my ISP for me.