Censorship and the Need for Anonymous Proxy Software or Service
Many countries engage in some form of internet censorship, whether it is in the form of banning an online community or a full-blown censoring of popular websites such as YouTube. Internet censorship is defined as “is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet.” Countries vary in how strict or lax the control is over the Internet, but even the most lax countries still target certain websites such as religion-related sites, or social networking sites. The censoring of the Internet has brought about different resources for accessing restricted sites, mainly in the form of circumventors, such as anonymous proxy servers.
In 2006, “Reporters without Borders” published a list of 13 enemies of the Internet including: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) also categorizes countries as pervasive, substantial, nominal, and watchlist. Pervasive includes countries that practice the most extreme cases of censorship, especially banning websites with political content. Many of the users can be certain to face imprisonment for even visiting these websites. A partial list of nations in this category includes: Iran, Burma, and China. Substantial includes countries such as: South Korea, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Nominal countries include: Australia, Canada, and India. Watchlist countries include: Morocco, Norway and Russia.
Another method for classification is based on what content is blocked by certain countries. These websites are classified as:
- Political: The category includes content that strays from the political view of the government. This category also includes human rights, religion, or other social causes that restrictive governments attempt to control.
- Social: Sites that are related to sexuality, gambling, drugs and other subjects that could be deemed as “offensive” by a nation.
- Conflict/Security: This category focuses on sites that relate to wars/skirmishes, dissent, or other types of conflict.
- Internet Tools: This category includes websites used to circumvent censorship, language translation websites, or sites that promote the use of Instant Messaging services or E-mail services.
Countries may block some or all of these types of websites, depending on the content.
Aside from restrictive governments, many companies censor and monitor the Internet in their offices. Many websites are blocked that are considered leisure, and not related to the employees’ working environment. IT departments may block certain domains or track the Internet usage because employees have no reason to be using certain websites during office hours. Again, circumventors and other such software can be used to access blocked websites, but IT departments are quick to act so that they can stop the more popular proxy sites from being used.
While governments and businesses are restricting the way people use the Internet, new methods are always being created to circumvent restrictions and gain access to censored websites. With many restrictive governments using imprisonment as a method to implement censorship, it is becoming more important to be able to circumvent the censors. Two of the most common tools used to circumvent these restrictions are Proxy Services like Proxify and Proxy Software like Private Proxy. Both offer to route a person’s Internet traffic through an anonymous proxy server where their traffic is encrypted and IP address is masked.
