Internet Censorship has grown drastically over the past few years with countries like China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran taking the lead over other governments in extending internet censorship to almost all sources of free unbiased information. Some schools and offices also prevent users from accessing certain websites which they believe are of no use in the respective areas. Governments sometimes enforce censorship on all forms of print and digital media like newspapers and television. China is known to have even forced Google to filter its search results. In such times, sometime you may need to access a website that is blocked. This article explains how.
Which websites are most commonly Blocked?
The most commonly blocked websites include websites about pop culture, health, medicine, women, religion and politics. Social websites that are often blocked include
Blogger (Blogspot) blogs,
Google News,
Facebook, Orkut, Myspace, Bebo, Flickr, Hulu, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Messenger, Typepad, eBay, WikiLeaks, Digg, Reddit, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Delicious,
Youtube, DMOZ etc.
Access Blocked Websites at School, Work or Anywhere
There are many genuine reasons for which you might visit blocked websites at your school or office. Given below are the many ways you can use to regain access to the blocked website you wish to visit.
1.
Cache: Many search engines maintain a cache of web pages indexed by them. You can search for a website on Google , Yahoo! or Bing and click on the cached link that is given next to the result. To load the web pages more quickly, you can visit the text-only version.
2.
Using Google Mobile Search: Google Mobile Search acts as a proxy which you can use easily. It removes all the CSS styling and JavaScript and presents a stripped down version of the web page to the user from it's own server. Due to this, the blocking
software feels that you are visiting Google, whereas in reality, you are viewing the blocked website. It also breaks larger pages into many smaller ones. Go to
Google Mobile Search.
3. To access a blocked website, you can enter the
IP address instead of the URL in your browser's address bar. This can bypass most basic forms of website blocks. Although if the blocking software maps the IP address to the website domain, the website will still remain blocked. You can find the IP address of the website by pinging the website domain name in command prompt and noting its IP address. Execute ping tweakandtrick.blogspot.com in
command prompt to ping tweakandtrick.blogspot.com.
4.
Access Blocked Websites using Google Translate or
Yahoo! Babelfish. You can also use translational services to get on blocked websites. To do so, enter a language different from the website in the 'From' field and English in the "To" field. You can also use this method to bypass software that block websites on the basis of specific keyword mentions. Just translate the URL you wish to visit in a different language to overcome the keyword block.
5.
Proxy Websites: There are many proxy websites (anonymizers) which open blocked websites on their servers and present the data to you. This hides from the service providers the address of the website you are trying to visit. Few popular free ones include
HideMyAss,
Anonymouse and
KProxy.
6.
Use RSS Readers for Accessing Restricted Blogs: All blogs syndicate their content via RSS feeds which you can subscribe to in web based RSS Readers like Bloglines to access blocked content. For example, the RSS feed of this blog is located at
http://tweakandtrick.blogspot.com/rss.xml.
7.
Use IP Address to Decimal Conversion: If you cannot access blocked websites, you can enter the decimal number of the URL's IP address to get access to restricted websites. Search Google for IP to Decimal + IP Address of the banned website and Google will convert it into decimal. Enter that into your browser's address bar and see if the blocked website opens.
8.
Create a 2 layered Unblocker: Just go to Google Translate or Yahoo! Babelfish, open any proxy website inside it and then use that proxy website to access your blocked website. In this way, you can achieve two layered website unblocking.
9.
TOR:
TOR or The Onion Router is a free software that protects the privacy and security of its users by channeling data through multiple nodes so as to prevent the orginal data from being unscrambled. Although browsing through TOR is a bit slow, it is one of the most effective ways of bypassing restricted websites.
10.
Nyud.net: To unblock blocked websites, just add nyud.net to their URL. For example, if this blog (
tweakandtrick.blogspot.com) is blocked, you can visit it by going to
tweakandtrick.blogspot.com.nyud.net.
11.
Opera Mini Simulator: Opera offers a web based version of Opera Mini to allow users to get an experience of what it is like. You can use this
demo version to access most websites that offer their mobile versions. Even websites that do not offer a mobile version can be viewed through this, although the quality of the results obtained may not be that good.
12.
Changing DNS servers: A common way of blocking websites is preventing DNS servers from giving the locations of the blocked website's servers. In such a scenario, changing your DNS servers to
OpenDNS's or Google's DNS will be your best option to get over the block. As an additional advantage, this will also
increase your internet speed.
13.
VPN Software: VPN or Virtual Private Network Software can be described as a tunnel under the public network that offers more anonymity than proxy websites as it also encrypts the data transferred by the blocked website thus, offering complete anonymity when you access your favorite web applications. Although most VPN software are available as paid software only,
HotSpotShield is a popular free alternative.
14.
IP Hiding Software: Sometimes, websites block users on a particular IP address from visiting themselves. In such cases, free IP hiding software like
UltraSurf can be used to visit them. While free software offer very less features as compared to paid ones, they are still effective for overcoming most common blocks.
15. Edit your host files: Some malware and blocking software edit your host files and add a website's address to prevent you from visiting that website. In such a scenario, you can edit your host file with Notepad by visiting “C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc” if C is your system drive and remove that website. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, a warning from UAC might be displayed while editing your host files.
