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Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

It stands to reason that an especially large volume of abuse will originate from the most populous country in the world. I don't think that's a reason to cut them off from the global Internet. If it's true that their government is already oppressing their own people (I don't know what's truth and what's propaganda), then the rest of us shouldn't make it worse for those people by cutting off whatever outside connections they manage to have.

Also, I'm generally bothered by comments like this one that stir up the general human tendency toward xenophobia. We should be fighting that tendency within ourselves, not fighting the out group. Whichever group of people we want to demonize, we should remember that they're people just like us. We shouldn't punish the majority of them for what a minority are doing to us.

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sorry but this opinion is ridiculous on its face. Blaming china because of population is a complete joke. China (by a large margin), Russia, and poorly configured proxies are 95% of all malicious traffic targeting US-based businesses. It's not even a question.

If you run a small-medium sized business in the US blocking all of countries you can't do business with anyway will save a ton of trouble.

> China (by a large margin), Russia, and poorly configured proxies are 95% of all malicious traffic targeting US-based businesses.

My reasoning for these kinds of stats is usually: Of course it makes sense to attack targets in jurisdictions which can't catch you or equally hide in a country which won't extradite you. (But I never looked into it to any depth, so it's baseless reasoning.)

They are not the most connected country, but a long shot. Why isn’t India no. 2 by your logic? Stop apologizing for unacceptable behavior from a country that openly purports to become “the superpower of the world”.

I'm not apologizing for anyone's bad behavior; I just don't want us to escalate an already tense situation. "The only winning move is not to play", right?

No, you can’t let somebody poke you with a stick and go “the only winning move is not to play” and pretend like it’s raining.

But that's fair they become it. After all they're 20% of humanity...

Yes, they are the most connected country in number of users (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...) and that's what matters: the more users there are, the more malicious activity there will be

I don’t think number of people with internet access is a good measure of connectedness at all. Curiously, you dodged my question on why India isn’t the same when your list also shows they should be.

I mean, if their government doesn’t stop, and often even encourages the behavior, what are we supposed to do? Just roll over and show them the other cheek?

I agree you don’t want to cut them off, but on the other hand, I don’t want 90% of all global malicious traffic to originate from a specific country.

> I don’t want 90% of all global malicious traffic to originate from a specific country.

Is that actually true? I guess I'm inclined to believe that claims like that are more likely to be propaganda from western governments and/or western-owned companies.

If it is true, I wonder why their government isn't stopping it. They must realize that it's giving them a bad reputation in the wider world.

No it's not true, the GP just lied out of spite. Also, the OP blog post wrote about Chinese AS' out of spite too /s

To put it rather mildly, I don't really think they care.

It was true (well, in the same ballpark, don’t remember exact numbers) for the website I was in a position to see it for. It may be different for others, but like 98% of the malicious traffic comes from 3 or 4 countries.

It is sometimes explicitly used by the government to bring down sites: see the "Great Cannon of China"[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon

> Also, I'm generally bothered by comments like this one that stir up the general human tendency toward xenophobia.

Most countries cooperate internationally in getting bad actors from hackers over pirates to pedos booted off the Internet and into jail.

The exceptions are China and Russia who won't do anything against any bad actor and India which is a big base for phone scams (as is Turkey for the European Union, but even Erdogan's regime is cooperating with EU police in taking down scammers).

I agree, the line between demanding at least some sort of common decency standards and xenophobia is thin in these days, but we have to get everyone on board to protect everyone else from rampant abuse.

yup. toxik's comment disgusts me. So much for being against the government and the bad apples and not against the common citizen. Let's just cut off all the devs doing their jobs every day from accessing github, or let's just cut off everyone who was curious enough to bypass the GFW and look around on the outer internet, or let's just cut off someone simply trying to contact an international friend. The truth is: people like toxik could not care less about any person who happens to live inside the borders of "public enemy no. 1".

Sigh.

Your comment contains no information and only presents an extended ad hominem. Go read the site rules please. This isn’t the place for moral grandstanding.

Most Chinese internet users would not miss Western internet for a second, a fact you would be aware of if you actually had any insight into Chinese culture.

This attitude that you cannot give consequences to abuse because THINK OF THE POOR CHINESE is so utterly laughable.

> if you actually had any insight into Chinese culture

Thanks for the blind assumption. I'm Chinese myself.

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