Wednesday, December 7, 2011

How to Bypass online censorship

So theres a lot of chatter online about certain people in the govt. who want to censor facebook, twitter and other online social platforms/sites/networks or generally any site they feel like.

Obviously the parties proposing this have no clue about how technology works..
so this post will either
a) go over their heads
b) make them thank me for giving them pointers on more effective ways to block content(best of luck with that)
c) make them say even more ridiculous stuff (like "ban all web enabled devices")

in any case, for those of you panicking that FB or Twitter will get blocked in india or something like that, heres how you can access them through any firewall(even your office one).

So here are a few Ways To Access Blocked Sites(whichever part of the world you may be in)on your desktop(for android tablets and other devices click here).

1) Redirection using a URL shrinker
Sometimes its just the URL thats been banned. Converting it to another shorter URL with short URL services like bit.ly , MooURL, SnipURL etc.. might work..

2) The Wayback Machine Archives
The Wayback Machine is an online service that periodically keeps a copy of almost all websites on the Internet.. in some cases from the date they first went live! Clicking on the latest copy of what Wayback Machine has should give you access to a slightly older version of the blocked site.

3) Use a Proxy website
these sites let you to take advantage of their proxy or domain to surf other sites as anonymous. The drawbacks are speed.. and in most cases flash content won't work.
Just google the word "proxy" and try any of the resulting sites.

4) Use a translation service like AltaVista BabelFish, Google Translate to view a translated version of the blocked site.(basically the translated version will be coming to you via their site rather than the blocked domain). You can even use the same site to retranslate back to english.

5) If it a news site or blog, then all you need to do is Subscribe To its RSS Feed
and read it with an RSS reader, or have it send the new posts directly to your email.

6) Use Tor - www.torproject.org

or one of the browser bundles they provide.
(i prefer the older OperaTor(uses opera) as it requires no configuration at all)

for more ways to access blocked site, google "ways to access blocked sites" or go here

for android tablets and other devices try orbot

to learn more click here

No comments: