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Think of how many people who have remote jobs with American companies couldn't connect to their meetings while they "work from home" while secretly being in Chi

Think of how many people who have remote jobs with American companies couldn't connect to their meetings while they "work from home" while secretly being in China! Normally they have to fight VPN issues anyway, but having a sovereign state inject your packets is certainly a fun new one.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I suspect those connections worked fine. It’s good to know the boss.
- chickenzzzzu 1y ago
  I definitely appreciate that a percentage of so called "employees" are actually just full fledged Chinese nationals, living permanently in China, paid a salary to pretend to be an American who had their identity stolen. But there absolutely is also a non-negligible number of Chinese and Indian nationals, who have some type of visa status in the US (especially a green card) who spend many months in their original countries making $200,000 or more per year while living like royalty in their home countries :)
  - bapak 1y ago
    The green card isn't citizenship, you lose it if you don't live in the US. It's not like they don't know when you enter or exit the country.
    - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
      6 months is a very long time.
      - Wolfbeta 1y ago
        2019 feels like 6 months ago.
        esseph 1y ago
        Feels more like 20 years ago. So much has happened since then...
      - buckle8017 1y ago
        There is no magic amount of time. If you get a green card and leave the us for any amount of time, on return the border agent makes a determination on the spot if you intended to live abroad. Less than six months is simply less suspicious than more.
        chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        And what are you supposed to do if they make a determination against you, return to your passport holding country and hire a lawyer? If the answer is yes, well then it is yet more proof that the US immigration system operates basically extrajudicially just like the IRS and ATF, and only occassionally do the courts pull them back in after much hardship for the plantiff. Words and policies are supposed to have meaning, and I doubt we'll get any charts or graphs on border refusals per amount of time spent abroad for GC holders.
        buckle8017 1y ago
        Well yes the actual please has meaning. Green cards are for people who intend to continuously by resident in the united states. If you go home for 3 months and get a job and rent a house then you no longer continuously reside in the united states. It's that's simple, but there's no hard or fast rule on how many days.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Not with my amount of doctor visits it is not.
tietjens 1y ago
How common can this really be? And what kind of companies? I’m finding it really hard to imagine this to be widespread.
- Ayesh 1y ago
  I live in a popular Digital Nomad friendly country, and myself included, work with Europe/American companies roughly matching their time zones. Now, the people I work with know that I'm not really located in the same time zone, but I know people who don't bother to mention it. I rarely get phone calls, but I have a roaming connection active for banking/OTP/etc. Plenty of cheap cafes with great WiFi (500mbps+ almost everywhere), and several times cheaper too.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Yeah if I'd sneak off to work from another place I'd pick somewhere really nice. Not China.
  - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
    You say that because you don't hold a Chinese or Indian passport. Now think of those who do, who have family obligations, food preferences, local bank accounts.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > You say that because you don't hold a Chinese or Indian passport. Not really. People like it in China, regardless of whether they're Chinese. I took an English teaching certification course in Shanghai. The teachers for that course were used to rotating around the world as the company held courses in various random locations. One day the teachers asked what was apparently a standard question for them, "are you planning to stay here after you get the certification?" And they were flabbergasted when everyone answered yes. Apparently in most of the locations that offer CELTA courses, the majority of people come for the course and get out as soon as they can.
      - 1y ago
veunes 1y ago
How many people suddenly "lost internet" mid-meeting and had to blame it on their router...
Shank 1y ago
Anyone operating in/around China who needs a real VPN has a service they pay for and use that isn't mainstream that isn't blocked (using V2ray or similar). There's a reason why Shadowrocket is the number 1 app on the app store. I'm sure there are a lot of cases of people using e.g., off-the-shelf VPN apps and have trouble, but power users in China are always running a VPN, usually to Japan, that doesn't have this problem.
- chickenzzzzu 1y ago
  How do you propose users in China will magically get around a nation state injecting packets?
  - Retr0id 1y ago
    > using V2ray or similar
  - appease7727 1y ago
    That's literally what VPNs are for. If you aren't aware: a Virtual Private Network creates a fully encrypted link between you and a remote node. So long as your encryption keys are secure, there's no way for anyone (even a global superpower) to listen to or intrude on that connection. There is no possible way to break into this connection, even with the entire planet's computing resources. From the outside, all you can see is a stream of encrypted data between two nodes. You cannot tell where the traffic goes once it exits the VPN server or what it contains. The only way to compromise a VPN connection is the most straightforward and pedestrian: compromise the VPN host and directly spy on their clients with their own hardware. The GFW certainly can and has detected such encrypted streams and blocked them for being un-inspectable. With a VPN you can perfectly hide what you're doing and you can perfectly prevent intrusion. You cannot prevent someone noticing you're using a VPN. China can simply blanket ban connections that look like VPN traffic. But they cannot tell what you're doing with that VPN.
    - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
      Thanks for the reply. In order to connect to the VPN, your first call must be over https, from China, to the VPN. How does that circumvent the phenomenon in the article, where a nation state was injecting TCP to cause your connection to hang up, thus no VPN connection?
lossolo 1y ago
> Normally they have to fight VPN issues anyway There are special virtual SIM cards that provide access to services from mainland China, as well as VPNs that function normally without issues. I used both while I was in China.
- kotri 1y ago
  Yeah, have used one. Mine was a downloadable eSIM and meant for foreign travelers with 1-week plan. It actually establishes an IPsec VPN to the origin country. Beijing dare not to block foreigners' roaming services.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I suspect those connections worked fine. It’s good to know the boss.

chickenzzzzu 1y ago
I definitely appreciate that a percentage of so called "employees" are actually just full fledged Chinese nationals, living permanently in China, paid a salary to pretend to be an American who had their identity stolen. But there absolutely is also a non-negligible number of Chinese and Indian nationals, who have some type of visa status in the US (especially a green card) who spend many months in their original countries making $200,000 or more per year while living like royalty in their home countries :)
- bapak 1y ago
  The green card isn't citizenship, you lose it if you don't live in the US. It's not like they don't know when you enter or exit the country.
  - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
    6 months is a very long time.
    - Wolfbeta 1y ago
      2019 feels like 6 months ago.
      - esseph 1y ago
        Feels more like 20 years ago. So much has happened since then...
    - buckle8017 1y ago
      There is no magic amount of time. If you get a green card and leave the us for any amount of time, on return the border agent makes a determination on the spot if you intended to live abroad. Less than six months is simply less suspicious than more.
      - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        And what are you supposed to do if they make a determination against you, return to your passport holding country and hire a lawyer? If the answer is yes, well then it is yet more proof that the US immigration system operates basically extrajudicially just like the IRS and ATF, and only occassionally do the courts pull them back in after much hardship for the plantiff. Words and policies are supposed to have meaning, and I doubt we'll get any charts or graphs on border refusals per amount of time spent abroad for GC holders.
        buckle8017 1y ago
        Well yes the actual please has meaning. Green cards are for people who intend to continuously by resident in the united states. If you go home for 3 months and get a job and rent a house then you no longer continuously reside in the united states. It's that's simple, but there's no hard or fast rule on how many days.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Not with my amount of doctor visits it is not.

tietjens 1y ago

How common can this really be? And what kind of companies? I’m finding it really hard to imagine this to be widespread.

Ayesh 1y ago
I live in a popular Digital Nomad friendly country, and myself included, work with Europe/American companies roughly matching their time zones. Now, the people I work with know that I'm not really located in the same time zone, but I know people who don't bother to mention it. I rarely get phone calls, but I have a roaming connection active for banking/OTP/etc. Plenty of cheap cafes with great WiFi (500mbps+ almost everywhere), and several times cheaper too.
wkat4242 1y ago
Yeah if I'd sneak off to work from another place I'd pick somewhere really nice. Not China.
- chickenzzzzu 1y ago
  You say that because you don't hold a Chinese or Indian passport. Now think of those who do, who have family obligations, food preferences, local bank accounts.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > You say that because you don't hold a Chinese or Indian passport. Not really. People like it in China, regardless of whether they're Chinese. I took an English teaching certification course in Shanghai. The teachers for that course were used to rotating around the world as the company held courses in various random locations. One day the teachers asked what was apparently a standard question for them, "are you planning to stay here after you get the certification?" And they were flabbergasted when everyone answered yes. Apparently in most of the locations that offer CELTA courses, the majority of people come for the course and get out as soon as they can.
    - 1y ago

veunes 1y ago

How many people suddenly "lost internet" mid-meeting and had to blame it on their router...

Shank 1y ago

Anyone operating in/around China who needs a real VPN has a service they pay for and use that isn't mainstream that isn't blocked (using V2ray or similar). There's a reason why Shadowrocket is the number 1 app on the app store. I'm sure there are a lot of cases of people using e.g., off-the-shelf VPN apps and have trouble, but power users in China are always running a VPN, usually to Japan, that doesn't have this problem.

chickenzzzzu 1y ago
How do you propose users in China will magically get around a nation state injecting packets?
- Retr0id 1y ago
  > using V2ray or similar
- appease7727 1y ago
  That's literally what VPNs are for. If you aren't aware: a Virtual Private Network creates a fully encrypted link between you and a remote node. So long as your encryption keys are secure, there's no way for anyone (even a global superpower) to listen to or intrude on that connection. There is no possible way to break into this connection, even with the entire planet's computing resources. From the outside, all you can see is a stream of encrypted data between two nodes. You cannot tell where the traffic goes once it exits the VPN server or what it contains. The only way to compromise a VPN connection is the most straightforward and pedestrian: compromise the VPN host and directly spy on their clients with their own hardware. The GFW certainly can and has detected such encrypted streams and blocked them for being un-inspectable. With a VPN you can perfectly hide what you're doing and you can perfectly prevent intrusion. You cannot prevent someone noticing you're using a VPN. China can simply blanket ban connections that look like VPN traffic. But they cannot tell what you're doing with that VPN.
  - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
    Thanks for the reply. In order to connect to the VPN, your first call must be over https, from China, to the VPN. How does that circumvent the phenomenon in the article, where a nation state was injecting TCP to cause your connection to hang up, thus no VPN connection?

lossolo 1y ago

> Normally they have to fight VPN issues anyway There are special virtual SIM cards that provide access to services from mainland China, as well as VPNs that function normally without issues. I used both while I was in China.

kotri 1y ago
Yeah, have used one. Mine was a downloadable eSIM and meant for foreign travelers with 1-week plan. It actually establishes an IPsec VPN to the origin country. Beijing dare not to block foreigners' roaming services.