Ask HN: How to connect to a remote desktop securely while in China?

4 points by somecoolguy 14y ago ↗ HN

I am going to be traveling through China on business next month and I have heard lots of stories about how they will monitor the internet usage of business travelers and steal emails and other data from their computers.

To combat this, I am thinking about going to China with a clean computer and then connecting to a remote desktop from which I could log in to email and do all of my browsing.

My question is, would the Chinese government still be able monitor all of the data that I send to that remote desktop? Would they be able to intercept the IP and username/password for the remote desktop? How would I set up encryption so that they couldn't see what I was doing?

If anyone knows of any other good resources for protecting privacy while in China, please post them here.

2 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 13.0 ms ] thread

JoachimSchipper 14y ago ↗

According to Wikipedia, the Remote Desktop that's included with Windows Vista and later includes TLS encryption, which should be sufficient.

Of course, you could just set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which encrypts your traffic and then tunnels it to some (presumably trustworthy) computer. One convenient open-source solution is OpenVPN, but there are lots of open-source and commercial options. This may or may not be blocked in China.

yuhong 14y ago ↗

Though you should verify the certificate to be sure.