Sending emails from China

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xpd

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#169735 24-Mar-2015 13:17

Have a friend who visits China on a semi-regular basis for work, but always has issues with his email.

Incoming, not a problem - outgoing is the issue. Thanks to the Chinese firewall, he has heck of a time trying to find a connection that will let him send emails out.

He currently uses Vodafone for email, but cant access Vodafones SMTP from China (with and without auth it fails to connect).

Cant use Gmail SMTP as thats blocked as well....

Anyone know of a solution ? Preferably free ;)

He is moving everything to Office365 soon so hopefully thats allowed from China ;)

My only other solution for him is a VPN but even then, how do we know if thats going to connect from China.....

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Dynamic

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#1266745 24-Mar-2015 13:19

SMTP2GO.

Awesome service. Big fan. You can even send emails on Port 80. :)

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Dynamic

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#1266747 24-Mar-2015 13:20

Naturally your friend should assume everything sent/received is being read by someone who will want to turn that information to their own commercial advantage.

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#1266757 24-Mar-2015 13:23

I can't answer the question on how you know it's going to connect from China, but a simpler alternative to VPNs is to use proxies or SSH port forwarding. A cheap VPS (a few dollars per year) with some simple firewall rules to redirect any port to port 22 (SSH) would allow you to create a tunnel using any port that isn't blocked.

shk292

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#1266770 24-Mar-2015 13:48

Dynamic: Naturally your friend should assume everything sent/received is being read by someone who will want to turn that information to their own commercial advantage.

I thought that was just our GCSB who did that? Did Nicky Hager miss something? /sarc

Dynamic

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#1266795 24-Mar-2015 13:55

shk292:
Dynamic: Naturally your friend should assume everything sent/received is being read by someone who will want to turn that information to their own commercial advantage.

I thought that was just our GCSB who did that? Did Nicky Hager miss something? /sarc

I've heard more than one story from export-focussed clients. If I were travelling to China (and I would like to some day), I would not take any valuable Intellectual Property or use any communication channel that might expose IP.

Microsoft were very good at buying and integrating software products.

China has mastered copying products (allowing for quality variations) and protecting a foreign country's IP is not a high priority.

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