Beijing: Yahoo e-mail accounts belonging to
foreign journalists appeared to have been hacked and Google`s
Chinese search engine was intermittently blocked on Tuesday, the
latest troubles in China`s heavily censored Internet market.
The Yahoo Inc accounts of at least three journalists and
an analyst became inaccessible over the last few weeks. They
were greeted with messages saying, "We`ve detected an issue
with your account" and were told to contact Yahoo, they said
today. Yahoo techs told one of the four that his account had
been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if
the other instances were related.
Sensitivity about Internet security has run high since
Google Inc announced in January it might leave China after a
series of cyberattacks and complaints about censorship. Last
week, Google made a partial retreat, shutting down its
mainland-based search engine and redirecting those queries
offshore, to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
Analysts have been watching closely to see if China
retaliates for Google`s high-profile departure from the
mainland search engine market.
Many redirected queries appeared blocked today on the
Hong Kong-based search engine. Searches for benign terms were
met with results on Chinese competitors such as Baidu.com and
Soso.com, however, an error page would pop up when typed into
Google.com.hk.
Dozens of China-based Twitter users posted updates
saying they were having the same problem. But it wasn`t
immediately clear what was causing the glitch.
Zhou Shuguang, a Beijing-based writer who blogs under the
name "Zuola," said he tried to search the word "pest" using
several search engines. Only Google.com.hk returned an error
message.
PTI
