china

Prosecutors in China say more than a dozen housewives have engaged in smuggling Apple iPhones and iPads in order to avoid paying sales taxes. A total of 26 people have now been charged with participating in a total of five distinct smuggling rings. ... Reports suggest the smugglers were supplying iPhones and iPads to Lanyo Shuma.com, one of the main electronics suppliers on Taobao Marketplace, China's version of eBay and Amazon. Lanyou Shuma.com was thrown out of the marketplace in April, 2012, amid a scandal over alleged smuggling of the iPhone 4S from Hong Kong. (Source: reuters.com ) High ... (view more)

Is your new PC already infected with malware? It's possible, experts say. According to a new report, a number of computers recently built in China are not only shipping with counterfeit software but also come laced with malware. Thanks to ... "bloatware" -- the pre-loaded third-party trial software included with most new computers -- getting a new system to run the way you want can be a real hassle. However, finding your new PC pre-loaded with malware is downright frightening. But that's exactly what Microsoft says it found on some new computers built and distributed in China. Microsoft Files ... (view more)

Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook has now visited Foxconn, the eastern Chinese manufacturing facility that has been at the center of a media storm these past few months. Last week Cook toured Zhengzhou Technology Park, where many Apple ... products, including the newest version of the popular iPad, are produced. Cook has never before visited China. According to reports concerning the high-level visit, at one point Cook met with and was subtly scolded by a top Chinese official. Foxconn Workers Report Being Treated Like 'Animals' Zhengzhou, which employs about 120,000 people, is the best known ... (view more)

Microsoft has signed a deal to provide English-language results to China's dominant search engine, Baidu. It's sure to re-ignite a debate about the country's attitude to online censorship. According to Baidu, around 10 million English-language ... searches are carried out on its site every day, and it admits it doesn't do a good job of handling them. Under the new deal, results for such searches will be powered by Microsoft's Bing engine. (Source: com.cn ) The precise details of the arrangement are being kept confidential, though at least one report states no money is changing hands. The most ... (view more)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has had a private meeting with the head of China's largest search engine, Baidu. It's prompted speculation Facebook is trying to find a way past that country's ban on the site. Zuckerberg had lunch with Robin Li, ... head of Baidu, while making a visit to China officially described ad as a holiday. However, a Baidu spokesman said he thought Zuckerberg wanted to "get the advice of someone who knows the Internet landscape well here." (google.com) The Great Firewall of China At the moment, Chinese users are blocked from accessing Facebook by a government filtering ... (view more)

In a recent annual security report posted on the web site of China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT), it was reported that almost 7 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses were infected with the "Conficker B" ... worm at the end of 2009. While the number of infections fluctuated on a week-to-week basis, all but one week had at least 5 million IP infections in the country. Statistically, China represents 28 per cent of the total number of compromised computers infected with the Conficker B worm, the largest percentage world-wide. (Source: pcworld.com ) ... (view more)

A recent study reports that 4.4% of all Internet usage in China is done without antivirus protection. What is more disturbing is that these figures have actually increased when compared to figures from last year. The studies were conducted by the ... Chinese Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) and China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT). $2.2B In 'Service Fees' To Clean Up Attacks In 2009, Chinese Internet users spent almost 15.3 billion yuan ($2.2 billion) on service fees designed to clean up after cyber attacks. It is also reported that free ... (view more)

Google has upped the ante in its dispute against China by uncensoring its previously censored search results. Officially, Google has not breached Chinese rules which insist on search results being filtered to remove content officials class as ... objectionable; this includes political information and viewpoints the government wants to suppress. Instead, Google has set its Chinese home page (google.cn) to route directly to Google's search tool via the Hong Kong version of the site (google.com.hk). It looks inevitable that China will simply block access to that site altogether. The government has ... (view more)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says his company will not pull its operations out of China. The issue arose after Google said it could be forced to leave the country after deciding to no longer censor website results. Ballmer did not discuss the ... censorship issue directly, but told CNBC that "We've been quite clear that we're going to operate in China." He added that "I don't understand how [pulling out] helps us and I don't understand how that helps China." (Source: washingtonpost.com ) Questioned about recent hacking attacks on Google that appear to have originated in China and may have prompted ... (view more)

Here's a New Year's resolution for designers, writers, and generally anyone associated with skin-trade sites in China: get the heck out of your country. According to a recent report, over five thousand arrests were made by the Communist government ... during the past year in an effort to stamp out this kind of web content. The report itself is reliable. How do we know? It came straight from the horse's mouth -- in a statement last week, the Chinese government fully admitted that a sweeping attack against adult-themed content in the country during 2009 had led to the arrest of 5,394 persons and a ... (view more)