The Simplified View of Internet Censorship – Part 1
by Valy in Unblock sites | No CommentsEarlier this year, particularly in the month of March, there has been a buzz going around the Internet that China has restricted access to some foreign websites (the most popular example is Facebook). Despite this fact, some people knowledgeable with technology have found ways to be able to unblock websites and to bypass the Internet censorship through the use of VPN services or proxy. The Chinese government found out, however, and their response was to block out some of these VPN services like the L2TP and PPTP. This article would be all about how this kind of Internet censorship can be established in order to block websites.
The explanations found in this article focuses around making the reader understand how things work when it comes to the censorship of the Internet in the workplace setting. For a start, if you are currently based in China and you already know that whatever device you plug in to your computer connected to Internet is assigned a unique IP address. IP addresses are like postal addresses in this manner.
Censorship can be done on computers. If you are currently an employee who works for a company that has certain policies regarding the use of the Internet, then you might find it common that websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are not accessible within your workplace. If you have tried using a VPN service and proxies to unblock websites, you might even find that the IT administrators also working within the company have figured out ways to block those too. One rule commonly applied within these scenarios is the prohibition to change the settings of your computer browser. Web-based proxy services can be used; although they are not as convenient as using VPN services since web-based proxies often display a lot of ads.
Some web proxies and VPN services work since they are not included in the IT administrator’s list of websites to block out. If you happen to pass by some which have not yet been blocked, then you should be able to access some websites you want to visit which normally cannot be accessed without passing through a VPN service or a proxy.
Filtering of websites, proxies, and VPN services can be implemented using several solutions:
- Filtering by Regex (regular expressions)
- Filtering by Ports and Protocols
- Filtering according to the Originating IP Address
- Filtering by Blacklisted Websites
Limiting file downloads which has file extensions like .mp4, .mp3, .torrent, etc.
This is commonly done by denying peer-to-peer applications and any other forms of communication over the Internet.
IT administrators are well-versed with this one that they can tell if there are particular websites which are not allowed to be visit according to the IP address you are using.
Some IT administrators just maintain their own proxy server which already lists websites which are blacklisted according to the company’s policies.
These are a few and simple explanations on how companies can censor the Internet at their workplace. The Internet gets censored by IT administrators by making sure that access to VPN services and web proxies are not allowed within the confines of the workplace and the personal cannot unblock websites.
Related Posts- Using VPN Services to Access Blocked Sites – 23 Jan
- How to Hide your IP address in Australia and New Zealand – 18 Jan
- Unblock Google Music Website if you are not in the US – 27 Dec
- Unblock websites using TOR – 25 Dec
- Unblock websites with a VPN Service – 24 Dec
- Accessing Blocked Websites From China – 22 Dec
- Unblock Websites and Download Anonymously in New Zealand – 20 Dec
- Why governments block websites – 18 Dec
