Many legitimate websites are banned in India. Here's how to unblock them
Do you know that thousands of websites are banned in India? Many of them are legitimate websites, serving content that Indian laws allow. Yet, over the years, on the basis of opaque court orders and executive directives, a number of websites in India have been blocked.
Also, since there is no proper procedure in the country that can govern the blocking or unblocking of sites, the list of websites that you can’t access in India has only grown more and more. No one, most probably not even the department of telecom, knows the full list of sites blocked here. So how do you deal with it?
Tech-savvy web users already know the way out. But of late, some tools have become so commonplace on the Web that even regular users can easily see a video on YouTube that is otherwise blocked in a particularly country.
Here is how you can access a blocked site in India (granted that it is legally okay for you to access the content on that site):
Change DNS
Many websites in India are blocked using the DNS list. This means when you try to connect to a website, its name is checked against a list of sites that are blocked in India. This is a local list with an internet service provider. To get around this sort of block, all you need to do is use a DNS server that is not run by your internet service provider.
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| Many of them are legitimate websites, serving content that Indian laws allow. |
Instead, you can use Google DNS or Open DNS. To make the DNS change you will have to first copy the Google DNS details from web and then replace the DNS server in network settings. It sounds daunting but is actually quite easy to do.
Use browser with VPN
VPN is a tool used by people across the world to get around censorship. And depending on censorship and the VPN used, this is arguably the most effective way to get past the blocks. However, VPNs are slightly trickier to use. Or at least they were.
Now, for lightweight VPN use, you can just download Opera browser. This browser comes with a fairly decent VPN — SurfEasy — pre-installed in it.
Enable https
When websites use HTTPS, which is a secure protocol, it becomes difficult to block them. To force HTTPS, wherever possibly, you can use an add on in the Chrome or Firefox browser. This is called HTTPS Everywhere. This alone will unblock many of locally blocked sites. It is also a good idea to use HTTPS Everywhere for safer web browsing experience.
On phone, use free VPN
If you are trying to watch a region locked video on the YouTube app on phone and are failing, you can use the VPN on phone too. But unlike on the computer, where the VPN is inside the browser, on the phone it comes in as an app. We recommend the SurfEasy VPN. It is free and the ads that it uses are fairly non-intrusive.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)