If you have been blocked by websites for one reason or another you may be frustrated by the information that you cannot actually see.
Common reasons that websites are blocked on certain networks include:
- You are in a country that has restricted internet access
- You are on a work network and they want to keep you on task
- You are using a school computer that tries to keep students from seeing things
- You are using a public computer (like at a library) that has restrictions on the kind of websites you can go on
- To protect copyrighted material from being infringed upon
But Why Go Around the Restrictions?
Of course the restrictions are put in place with good intentions. Naturally we should be protected copyrighted information if the author needs it protected. Not everything is public domain, despite what internet pirates think. At work, they want to protect themselves from viruses while ensuring that their employees are staying on task. At schools, they need to ensure students are not looking at explicit material. And in some countries, there are morality codes of conduct that determine what you should be looking at. This works for a lot of people. Yet with the restrictions, information is also restricted. Students trying to do research online may find themselves locked out. Countries dictating what is moral and immoral are violating standard human rights. And sometimes, you just should not be blocked from information.
Information should not be restricted. Knowledge is power and taking about the people’s ability to have knowledge, is blocking them from expanding what they know or seeing the world in its entirety. On one hand, you perhaps could understand why Japan blocked most pornographic websites because it is against their culture. But then you look at how the Indian High Court blocked more than 400 websites due to a complaint by Sony who was streaming the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
How Do You Do It?
In order to bypass blocking, there are a few tricks that you can do to get around.
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Changing the DNS: The DNS server has all of the information on websites around the world. When a country is trying to block websites from working in their countries, they block the site on the DNS server so people in that country cannot move forward.
In order to go around that on a Windows computer, go to the computer’s Control Panel and to the Network and Sharing Center. There is an option there to change the adapter setting. Right click on the internet connection that you are using (like Airtel, BSNL, MTNL, etc) and click Properties. Then click on the TCP or IP and go to Properties. Then click on the radio button and enter 8.8.8.8 as the Preferred DNS Server and 8.8.4.4 as the Alternate DNS Server. Now you are using Google’s DNS and not your country’s.
On an iPhone it is much easier. Just go to the wifi settings and change the two values to the same Google DNS address. Android users will need to go to their wifi settings, click on the network you are attached to, then modify the network. Tap DHCP then Static IP and scroll until you see the modify DNS 1 and DNS 2 and change it to the Google DNS.
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Rewrite the URL:This one is pretty simple. You go to the address bar on your browsers, and there it says “http” change it to “https.” You should get an unverified SSL notice. Then you just click “proceed anyway” or “add exception certificate” or whatever the proceeding button says. Then you make it through the block to the site itself because it went through a different proxy server instead of the local DNS proxy that was blocking it.
