James Fallows writes about uptake of Hot Spot Shield in China. It’s a tool that tunnels your Web traffic through a VPN so that people can’t snoop on your Internet traffic, and is supported by ads that it inserts when you load Web pages. Among other things, it enables users in China to circumvent the Great Firewall and view Web pages that are otherwise blocked. (I wonder how long it will be before the Chinese government blocks access to anchorfree.com from inside the firewall so that people can’t download Hot Spot Shield?)