Great Wall of China
Google has pointed the finger at China's government for interfering with its Gmail service.
The Chinese authorities have been trying to put down an online dissident movement called the ‘jasmine revolution,' which is thought to have got its inspiration from events in the Middle East, The Guardian reported.
Now Google has reportedly admitted that while the crackdown has been going on, its Chinese users and advertisers have been having difficulty using Gmail in the past month and even an app to help people find relatives potentially affected by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has been compromised.
A Google spokesman reportedly said: "Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."
The search giant has apparently recently warned that it has "noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target."
It reportedly reckoned that the attacks were preying on an Internet Explorer vulnerability and Microsoft and Google were working together to fix the problem.
It is not the first time that Google has been on the receiving end of attacks from China and last January the company reportedly said that it thought its intellectual property was under fire. It also apparently said that it found the main aim of Gmail attacks was to get access to accounts of human rights activists in China.
While Google is apparently keeping quiet about the latest attacks for now, technology experts reportedly reckon they are getting cleverer.
One internet exec told the newspaper: "In the wake of what is happening in the Middle East I don't think China wants to be seen making heavy-handed attacks on the internet that would draw too much attention."
He reportedly said that an attack making it appear that there is a fault within Google's system is tricky to execute and the sporadic nature of the attacks makes them look "semi-industrial and very, very sophisticated."
