How to access Facebook in China

China is one of those few countries in the world that has its internet censored. Basically, it means that everything you search or access on the Internet is monitored by the government; What’s worse, some of the websites and / or apps may end up being banned due to their content. Typically, most countries ban porn and torrent sites for their citizens. In China, you would notice tighter control over what is accessed over the internet, with websites and services like Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter banned in the country.

If you are a traveler on vacation to China and you cannot access your Facebook account to share updates with your close and loved ones, don’t be discouraged – there is still hope. There are three smart ways to access your Facebook account in China – be careful though, and be prepared for the inherent risks of stepping out of the line of control in a country that does not tolerate rebellion.

Method n. # 1: use VPN

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is a secure gateway that protects your online privacy regarding the searches you perform, the websites you visit, or basically anything you do on the Internet. Using a VPN can give you the shade you need to access your Facebook account without hackers or government authorities snooping around trying to catch you. It is a safe method to access prohibited websites in China.

Method n. # 2: using proxies

A proxy is basically a website through which you can access other websites. It’s like a movie theater: you walk into a huge room, buy tickets to the movie of your choice and go see it. Proxies have a very interesting concept; If you open a proxy website in any random country and access a website through it, the web data makes it appear that you are accessing that website in that particular country. Sitting in China and accessing Facebook through a proxy located in the US shouldn’t be very difficult to execute. However, this method is not very reliable. First of all, proxies, in most cases, are not equipped to handle social media websites. Second, the Chinese government often establishes powers and also blocks them.

Method n. 3: distributed networks

There is a browser called Tor, which uses the concept of distributed networks. This concept disperses your internet browsing information around the world across countless different nodes, helping to keep it anonymous and untraceable. However, while it may seem like a very cool trick, upload speeds can be very slow because data must travel a long distance to reach you. It is worth mentioning that Tor will not work in China with the default settings. It will require something called pluggable transport to work.

Now you know three important hacks to access Facebook in China. Share your travel experiences!