Dropbox, a popular cloud storage service, has been blocked by China this week.
According to several users on the Dropbox forums, the block began on Monday with no explanation from the Chinese government. Despite having 298 Million Internet users the country continues to block social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Dropbox appears to be the latest victim in a long line of companies whose services are blocked without explanation in China.
Dropbox gives users 2GB of free cloud storage space, with extra space available for a fee. Users can also gain up to 8GB of additional free space by referring other people to the service. When you load Dropbox onto a computer or mobile device, the data you put in it will be synced across all locations, in addition to the Dropbox servers. This makes it an ideal situation for backing up important data, and keeping yourself organized across multiple locations. Should a user accidentally delete or overwrite a file, it can still be retrieved within 30 days via the Dropbox website.
China also attempted to impose further restrictions on the way its people use their computers by trying to pass legislation which would have required all personal computers sold within the country, to be shipped with software blocking access to certain websites. Fortunately the software, Green Dam Youth Escort, is only required on schools, internet cafes and other public use computers.
Dropbox users can also sync files between PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
To give Dropbox a try, click here (this referral link gives you an extra 250MB on top of the 2GB).
35 Comments - Add comment