[OTR-users] QQ is blocking OTR

Ananda Samaddar ananda.samaddar at gmx.co.uk
Fri Oct 17 10:46:22 EDT 2008


After some experimentation I do believe that the Chinese messaging
service QQ provided by Tencent
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ) is blocking OTR. I signed up
for two QQ ids and on two different PCs I installed Pidgin with the OTR
plugin.

I was able to send messages in English back and forth with no
problems.  I was not able to start a private conversation though.  So
knowing a little bit about how OTR works I decided to send the
following short strings through QQ via a normal Pidgin chat window:

?
?O
?OT
?OTR

The first three were sent and received the last one ?OTR wasn't, so
Tencent must be blocking OTR sessions.  Perhaps it might be worth
informing potential users of OTR with QQ that it won't work and that if
they want to use OTR they'll have to switch to a different IM provider.

I use MSN + OTR to chat with a friend in the People's Republic of
China, so Microsoft China don't appear to have blocked OTR, yet.  I
can't vouch for any other protocols w.r.t Chinese users as I haven't
tested them.

All things considered this is a big blow for privacy when communicating
with Chinese internet users as QQ is the most used IM service over
there.

regards,

Ananda Samaddar
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