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Best VPN For Macs, Whilsts Behind The Great Firewall of China?

HappyDude20

HappyDude20

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
3,688
1,479
Los Angeles, Ca
I'm currently in China and for the past month have not visited FaceBook or YouTube. Though its not dire for me to access these sites, I'd still like to considering I'd love to upload video of my travels to YouTube for family to see back home...and upload photos to FaceBook, aside from keeping in touch with family back home in California.

I've searched for hours on end concerning the topic of VPNs, though considering the Great Firewall of China itself, I'm subjected to mainly reading articles only concerning the matter.

Figured i'd ask the community for some assistance regarding being able to utilize a VPN service (for a first-timer).

Though money is somewhat of a factor; the bigger factors will be the ease of use, seeing as I consider myself a novice with VPN services & secondly that both YouTube & FaceBook must work.

Aside from that, i'm all ears. & thank you. Really.
 
Slink

I'm a big fan of Slink. You need to have a Mac at home that is on for Slink to work. So it isn't a hosted in the cloud VPN solution.
 
tbelote said:
I'm a big fan of Slink. You need to have a Mac at home that is on for Slink to work. So it isn't a hosted in the cloud VPN solution.
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As it turns out, Slinkware's site won't even load here in this country. Nevertheless doubt I could've used their services considering I brought my only Mac w/ me to China.
 
I use Witopia.net. They have VPN servers located around the globe which you can use. They use Viscosity and OpenVPN. This should allow you to access Facebook and YouTube. They also use their own DNS, which should by-pass any DNS blocking China may do. It is cheap (relatively speaking) and easy to set-up.
 
blueroom said:
Can you get into trouble doing this in China?
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Perhaps.. though all the foreigners i've run into are doing it. :D The thing is that i'm the only one on a Mac, so am researching this somewhat on my own.

SteinMaster said:
I use Witopia.net. They have VPN servers located around the globe which you can use. They use Viscosity and OpenVPN. This should allow you to access Facebook and YouTube. They also use their own DNS, which should by-pass any DNS blocking China may do. It is cheap (relatively speaking) and easy to set-up.
Click to expand...

You won't believe it but Witopia is blocked as well.

There's one called SkyDur; haven't heard too much about it...but I can access the site. Perhaps someone could shed some light on the matter?
 
I'm using Freedur and found it to be pretty reliable. I've tried several other VPN providers (Witopia, ExpressVPN, one other one) and always end up going back to Freedur. Now, Freedur and Skydur do have quite a past. You can Google "Freedur skydur" to find out more about it, and you're going to see different claims from each of the company's stating they're in the right. I can't vouch for Skydur as I ended up using Freedur but I can say Freedur, while it has it's quirks (sometimes crashes and have to reopen, server list changes often) it works well and is fast.
 
tcador said:
I'm using Freedur and found it to be pretty reliable. I've tried several other VPN providers (Witopia, ExpressVPN, one other one) and always end up going back to Freedur. Now, Freedur and Skydur do have quite a past. You can Google "Freedur skydur" to find out more about it, and you're going to see different claims from each of the company's stating they're in the right. I can't vouch for Skydur as I ended up using Freedur but I can say Freedur, while it has it's quirks (sometimes crashes and have to reopen, server list changes often) it works well and is fast.
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Thank you very much. It tooks a few tries to get into their site but I got in.

I'd love to try a free trial, if by any chance you knew how to do so. Whether it be a week trial, or even 1 hour or ten minutes, before jumping in the first month.

NEvertheless am downloading the app as i type and will fiddle around with it, hope it works!
 
Back when Freedur first launched a few years ago they had a free trial. I had thought they had a free 30 day money back guarantee now but I'm not able to find that on their site anymore.

BTW, you can also check out the free alternative called Paper Bus. I haven't had much luck with it but figure it's at least worth a try. Paper Bus was created by Freedur, I think.
 
If you are having a hard time accessing these programs you could have a friend on the other side of the firewall download them and use something like dropbox to share the files.
 
tcador said:
Back when Freedur first launched a few years ago they had a free trial. I had thought they had a free 30 day money back guarantee now but I'm not able to find that on their site anymore.

BTW, you can also check out the free alternative called Paper Bus. I haven't had much luck with it but figure it's at least worth a try. Paper Bus was created by Freedur, I think.
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Paper Bus doesn't work on this side of the Great Wall. . .

DustinT said:
If you are having a hard time accessing these programs you could have a friend on the other side of the firewall download them and use something like dropbox to share the files.
Click to expand...

I think I may have to go this route, though another foreigner here is emailing a link of a free VPN that she has access to here. . . I just hope its Mac friendly.
 
HappyDude20 said:
Paper Bus doesn't work on this side of the Great Wall. . .



I think I may have to go this route, though another foreigner here is emailing a link of a free VPN that she has access to here. . . I just hope its Mac friendly.
Click to expand...

You can try Acevpn, my friend. They have free VPN service, also you may purchase high speed connection at a very low price. In China I used to climb the great wall with this vpn set up in my Ipad and Iphone, I think it works for Mac too
 
Having this problem as well, I'm glad someone raised this up.

I tried looking at Freedur but it's a paid-ware and I'm not really into the idea of paying for something that I will not be using for long (i.e. I'm just staying in China for 6 weeks).

The idea of using facebook/twitter is of course awesome. Acevpn sadly does not work for me.
 
jAguero16 said:
Having this problem as well, I'm glad someone raised this up.

I tried looking at Freedur but it's a paid-ware and I'm not really into the idea of paying for something that I will not be using for long (i.e. I'm just staying in China for 6 weeks).

The idea of using facebook/twitter is of course awesome. Acevpn sadly does not work for me.
Click to expand...

Where in China are you at?

Please trust me when I say that i've been researching the matter for the past 2 weeks and am not getting good results. It seems to be the only method will be paying for the service. Something I am beginning to consider after all the frustrating research. $9 for one month isn't bad...and I just may do it.

AceVPN does not work for me at all either.

Truth be told, after setting up a new VPN network under OSX's Network Pref., all I need is a VPN provider and my own account name and password...something that is difficult to find without paying for. Plus, considering when researching this i'm running into an array of sites that simply won't load at all cause they're blocked in this country.

Hopefully one of us finds a solution soon.
 
How much is your time worth? I recommend trying out a VPN for a month and if you don't find it's worth it, look for alternatives. I've been in the same boat and happy to have finally decided on one and put the research to rest.
 
tcador said:
How much is your time worth? I recommend trying out a VPN for a month and if you don't find it's worth it, look for alternatives. I've been in the same boat and happy to have finally decided on one and put the research to rest.
Click to expand...

Please do tell.

I'm currently thinking about either Skydur or Freedur, seeing as they're both Mac friendly. Though am not sure if it would play nicely with my iPod touch.
 
Please anyone.

I've been doing this for the past few hours w/o results.

I keep reverting back to Skydur or Freedur and have even attempted to Google "Freedur & Skydur" considering they both have the same dock icons and menu bar settings... it seems they're very similar and don't know which to choose.

Freedur is $5 more at $15, though it seems easier to navigate, while Skydur is of course a lesser price, and doesn't automatically renew my subscription...though I doubt both are compatible with my iPod Touch..

But being new to all this am struggling on pushing the trigger, hoping someone from the community can recommend a reliable mac VPN with confidence. :(:):eek::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

:apple::apple::apple::apple::apple:
 
Please, I'm now at the point of willing to pay for a VPN service.

Freedur and Skydur have allowed me to download their applications, however am not able to purchase any credit.

Astrill seems to be the best, most reliable option...though their pricing begins for 3 months service, while only needing 1.
 
cantthinkofone said:
Can one of your family members setup a service for you and give you the login details? Do you have or are you able to download any VPN programs?
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I've downloaded Freedur & Skydur...though am not allowed to purchase credits.

Sadly, I don't have anyone back home that can, considering most aren't computer literate. However, there is one friend back home that may...considering he has a Mac, and i'd probably be able to walk him through it with iChat's screen sharing..but i'll cross that road if I can't do it here.
 
You can use http://www.vtunnel.com - it's just a basic web VPN that will let you access things like Facebook mobile (http://m.facebook.com) without having anything installed. If you use vtunnel to login to http://facebook.com/mobile - it will give you a unique email address that you can upload photos to by emailing them as attachments.

Most things that are blocked in China have Chinese alternatives. I use Youku.com instead of Youtube - it tends to actually have the same videos uploaded.

I use a VPN service called FreeGate (I can email you the file if you can't download it yourself.) Its designed for Windows but it works on Mac if you install Wine.

I'd be interested if you find a VPN that works directly with Mac OSX - it would be nice to have something to send Dropbox's traffic through (I've stopped using it since I've been here) - let me know!
 
^ I tried it about a year ago using Firefox with the built-in plugin. It was slowwwwwww to the point it was unusable.
 
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