@JanJal
I wasn't here during Chinese New Year. How long did that last?

There's a modded apk version downloadable online, named "Stabiron". It's basically a cracked one in which you can simply change email every 7 days to make it work. Although I repeat this service is of low quality, I am interested to see if it works when I am back in censor land. (To be used as a back up service only)

Thanks for the info on ExpressVPN, ricsnap - it's all scary.
I think the Internet generally has, thanks to controlling power structures everywhere, proved itself to be, among other things, a venus flytrap, and I hate it when recent generations that have grown up with it casually toss off the Internet, as well as other advanced control/surveillance functions, with 'Oh, yeah of course', and a shrug.

@mr_woggle: "wasn't here during Chinese New Year. How long did that last?"

For my regular provider (which is not the topic of this thread), the problems started in Friday Jan 31, and it took until Feb 22 for them to get it back.

This week it went down again, as did apparently other popular services too.

@ricsnap: Are you saying Express VPN is collecting and selling user information?

What big commercial internet service isn't collecting and selling user information these days?

I think it's all a question of privacy vs usability. There are actually a lot of alternative options, as long as you are a bit tech savvy, you can avoid the whole Google, Facebook, baidu or qq eco system.

Set up your own server, use another search engine, install an Android version without Google app services, don't use those handy input methods of baidu or sougou, don't use cloud services, etc.

You don't have to be tech savvy to avoid google, facebook, baidu, qq, or cloud - all you have to do is wake up & realize you don't need them & never did. But an email address alone is enough to put your user info into some commercial a-hole's hands, isn't it?

How ridiculous. Spend ages setting up servers etc so as to ... remain behind the Great Firewall. As for Google, whatever else it is, it's a great educator. Just its books section alone.

How ridiculous. Spend ages setting up servers etc so as to ... remain behind the Great Firewall. As for Google, whatever else it is, it's a great educator. Just its books section alone.

Well EXVPN connectivity seems to be sorting itself out today, so let's hope things settle down again for a while.