Loading ...Internet censorship 2008
Once only known in 3rd world countries, the censorship has reached 1st world countries and it’s increasing. By now the ways they are using to censor the internet’s content are pretty simple. I will tell you about some methods and how to bypass them.
1. Messing with DNS entries
Description: By changing the entry on your internet provider’s name server a domain can be redirected to another site which is showing you that the site that you requested is blocked. Or, another way, redirecting it to your own computer where your browser will fail to find it of course. This is a method known to be used by German internet providers.
Bypass method 1: Use a proxy.
You can find a good description on how to set up your browser to use a proxy server on my blog: How to set up a proxy in your browser. But make sure that the servers ISP is not blocking the content that you are trying to view as well.
Bypass method 2: Change your name server.
On Windows XP go to the Network Connections of the Control Panel, right click your connection and click Properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click on Properties. On the next page enable “Use the following DNS server addresses:” by clicking on it. Then enter both IP’s mentioned below.
On Ubuntu Linux you can do that by clicking the System menu item, Administration, Network Settings. Choose the DNS tab by clicking on it. Here you can add or remove name servers. Good ones are the OpenDNS name servers for example, the IP’s are:
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220
I have never heard that any domains were censored on the OpenDNS name servers so it should be OK to use them.
Bypass method 3: Use a caching service
Caching services take the content from their own server. Mostly only text is being cached, so it is not so good to use this method if you are trying to view images. Google for example contains such caching. Try to find the site that you are seeking and then click at “Cached” at the bottom of the search result item.
2. Blocking IP’s
Description: It is possible to set up routing rules on the routers where your data is being sent through. So whenever your computer tries to connect to a specific IP, it will give your computer the signal that the connection failed or it will be rerouted to a server which will tell you that access to this page is forbidden. This can be done directly by your ISP or any other member of the route.
Bypass method 1: Use a proxy. (Same as Bypass method 2 of “Messing with DNS entries”)
You can find a good description on how to set up your browser to use a proxy server on my blog: How to set up a proxy in your browser. But make sure that the servers ISP is not blocking the content that you are trying to view as well.
Bypass method 2: Use a caching service. (Same as Bypass method 3 of “Messing with DNS entries”)
Caching services take the content from their own server. Mostly only text is being cached, so it is not so good to use this method if you are trying to view images. Google for example contains such caching. Try to find the site that you are seeking and then click at “Cached” at the bottom of the search result item.
3. Content filtering
Description: This method is also being used to avoid that kids are going to sites where they should not go to. But instead of filtering pages with adult material, they are filtering informations which the population should not have access to. Often used in countries such as China and Russia. This is one of the most effective censoring methods.
Bypass method 1: Use encrypted proxy services.
Right now I don’t know any proxy services which have an encrypted traffic flow besides Tor. You can try finding some by searching for “encrypted proxy” in google.
4. Excluding all addresses
Description: By setting up rules on their router, an ISP can disallow access to all addresses on the internet except a few saved in a list. This is often being used at schools during lessons to avoid the students going to non-school related pages. This form of internet censoring is the one hardest to bypass, since it censors the majority of the internet. Countries which disinform their people often use this method, for example North Korea.
Bypass method: None known. You would have to set up a port redirect or proxy on one of the few addresses which are allowed, but this is a task for a social engineer or a hacker so it does not fit in here.
Competition related censorship
Some internet service providers censor their competitors page in order for their customers to buy more services from them. I don’t know why some courts are even giving them the right to do that. Disallowing access to internet is like disallowing a human to use his/her ability to see. An internet access provider is not there to censor content, only to deliver it to the one who requested the content. Instead, the content provider should be sued for the content they offer, should it be illegal (”the aggressor”).
This way the German internet provider Arcor denied access to its customers to the free adult video exchange site called youporn to give more attention to another offer by a commercial site. This got them much media attention so their plans seemed to have worked out fine.
Tags: censor, censorship, Internet, youporn
2 comments »
March 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[...] Perhaps the job of china’s censoring firewall is to protect the mainstream users that I just described: Users who pick up opinions like sponges, whatever reached them first. As for those who cared about the opinion of the opposing parties, they had no problem overriding the censoring mechanism. Most of these ways to override censoring are mentioned in my article Internet censorship 2008. [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Another method - is using http://strongvpn.com or another VPN account. I’m using the VPN account provided by this company and it helps me much better then all those proxy servers.