In the last year or so we have seen a real ramp up on the control China has enforced on its internet users. At one point Google, Wikipedia, and Altavista, were all banned in China. Now it would seem there is a new form of internet policing that will occur in China… The Internet Police.

You heard right, Police in China will begin to patrol the web using animated police officers that will show up on your browser and give you a strong warning to stay away from illegal places. This is aimed at scaring surfers and reminding them that they are always being watched.

These alerts will show up every half hour on many of China’s top portals, such as Sohu and Sina. At some point these patrols will be visible on any site that is registered with Beijing servers, but for now will only be on a handful of sites.

If you happen to be in need of assistance when an internet police officer appears you can just click the officer and you will be taken to a website that will offer assistance.

“We will continue to promote new images of the virtual police and update our Internet security tips in an effort to make the image of the virtual police more user friendly and more in tune with how web surfers use the Internet,” it said.

(kdka)

By Sun Tzu on 28-08-2007