Internet censorship is something that almost all of us, no matter where we live, experience in one form or another. Social networking or video-sharing sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are often blocked in the office. Some sites, like Pandora, are country-specific. And if you’re in a place like China, you’ve heard stories about censorship, right?
Even if you can access the websites mentioned above with certain solutions or tools, your school/company or ISP may log your recent activities, which you may not want.
There are also web proxies online, but many of them are of unknown origin and therefore you cannot guarantee complete privacy. So how to hide IP and surf anonymously safely? I would say that a VPN is probably the ultimate and best solution to safely bypass internet censorship.
(Image courtesy – Cisco Systems)
According to Wikipedia,
A virtual private network (VPN) is a network that uses public telecommunications infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization’s network. It aims to avoid an expensive privately owned or leased line system that can only be used by one organization. The goal of a VPN is to provide an organization with the same secure capabilities, but at a much lower cost.
While Wikipedia’s definition highlights the commercial benefits of a VPN, for users like us it means that if we use a VPN service (like the one we’re about to discuss) that has a server in a particular country, we will be assigned the IP of that location and will be able to browse websites limited to that country privately and securely.
Therefore, if you are using a VPN service provided by a US server, you can access sites like Hulu and Pandora even if you are outside the US. The same is the case when you are in a restricted or censored network and use a VPN to connect to that network.
Now, let’s talk about some popular and free VPN services that can help you surf the web as comfortably as possible without worrying about privacy and censorship issues.
hotspot shield
Probably, this is the most popular service among all the free VPN providers. Hotspot Shield is an OpenVPN-based privacy and security tool, used to encrypt your web browsing while in public hotspots and to circumvent web filters.
Here are the steps to use it.
Download Hotspot Shield and then install the package. The newer version will first launch the download manager for installation.
Once the download is complete, the installer will launch.
The only thing I need to mention is that you may not need the Hotspot Shield IE toolbar, so just uncheck it during installation.
My guess is that you don’t want to enable these options either.
Once you’ve selected the options, you can click install to get started. If there are any dialogs prompting to install new drivers, just click “Install”.
Now you can double click the Hotspot Shield shortcut and wait for the connection. Right-click the program icon in the system tray to enable or disable the VPN connection. There is no need to register or pay for the service, but sometimes you will get ads and forced URL redirects.
Note: Although HotSpot Shield is quite effective, you cannot watch Hulu videos using it. It’s just that Hulu is smarter. However, most other US sites work fine.
Free VPN
Another popular VPN provider, Free VPN is also free and requires no registration. It features forced URL redirects and changes the homepage to show ads, but you can buy a premium account to get rid of them (also allowing torrenting).
Download free VPN and install it. If there are any dialogs prompting to install new drivers, just click “Install”.
Once installed, launch the free VPN and you can choose a “FREE” server to establish a VPN connection.
If you have a premium account, first go to the “Accounts” tab, enter your account information in the box, then you can choose any “PAY” server to connect to in the previous tab.
One more – proXPN
In addition to the popular free VPN services featured above, here’s a new one for our readers: proXPN – secure your internet connection instantly (that’s the tagline). All you need to do is sign up for a free account, then download, install and launch the client.
Oh, and proXPN is also ad-free! ????
It’s about free VPN services that allow you to hide your IP address and browse the web anonymously through an encrypted connection. In fact, these services can also be used when you are using public Wi-Fi so that your internet usage remains safe and private.
Do you know other tools and methods to effectively bypass internet censorship? What VPN tools have you tried? Tell us in the comments.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
