[liberationtech] GoAgent proxy

[Martin Johnson]

Theory aside, GoAgent seems to be far more popular in China than Tor. Some
reasons why this could be:

   - The main download site for Tor is blocked in China (
   https://en.greatfire.org/https/www.torproject.org). The main download
   site for GoAgent is only partially blocked (
   https://en.greatfire.org/https/code.google.com/p/goagent) and the one
   hosted on GitHub is not blocked at all (
   https://en.greatfire.org/https/github.com/goagent/goagent).
   - Instructions for how to use GoAgent are in Chinese. The Tor website is
   all in English (though the program itself is available in Chinese).
   - Just following the instructions for how to use GoAgent, it just works.
   It requires more work to configure than Tor, but the instructions are
   clear. Just following the instructions for Tor, it does not work (in
   China). Vidalia tries to connect to a few different servers, all of which
   are blocked in China, and gets stuck.
   - GoAgent is configured to bypass the proxy for domestic websites. That
   may not be ideal for privacy (since users can be traced by IP) but most
   users just want access. Browsing local sites through a foreign proxy is
   very slow. Users would have to manually switch the proxy on and off
   depending on what they are viewing - but GoAgent is smart enough to choose.
   - GoAgent is fast. Streaming YouTube videos works without buffering.

Martin Johnson
Founder of GreatFire.org and FreeWeibo.com | PGP
key<https://en.greatfire.org/contact>


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Karen Reilly <karen at akareilly.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:23 PM, Wojtek Bogusz
> <wojtek at frontlinedefenders.org> wrote:
> > thank you.
> >
> >> ... has been independently verified to be reasonably secure if used
> right
> >> by many experts and AFAIK this software has not.
> >
> > this is the reason i am asking on this list. hoping for answers and help.
> >
> >> I am hard pressed to think of a situation where using this would be
> >> preferable over TOR.
> >
> > it is when Tor is not working.
> >
>
> If you prefer Tor, an email to help at rt.torproject.org is called for
> when this happens. Use of obfs3 bridges is a good step before
> resorting to a single-hop proxy.
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