Undoing Syria’s Internet Ban

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The Syrian regime has blocked websites it doesn’t like from public access. But if you’re in Syria, there are many ways you can go around that ban and continue reading your favorite websites, without anyone ever noticing. A tutorial.

Important: this tutorial can help many Syrians out, so please forward it, link to it or email it to Syrians you know who are interested in free browsing.

Now, to the tutorial (PS: There is some very valuable information in the comments section too)

Let’s take an example of a website that was recently banned from Syria: www.almustaqbal.com is a Lebanese newspaper owned by an anti-Syrian politician. Now let’s suppose you want to browse almustaqbal.com while you’re in Syria without anyone finding out. What can you do?

First, you have to understand how banning works. What the Syrian government did was set up a firewall to ban a list of websites. The firewall is like an annoying bouncer who checks your name before allowing you into a club. Similarly, the firewall checks incoming websites to see if they matches the government’s black list.

This is why the best way to access a forbidden website is through another website, which is not on the government’s list. That kind of websites is technically known as a “proxy server”, and it is especially designed for this purpose.

An example proxy server is http://www.surfundercover.com. This is how it works: You go to www.surfundercover.com , and type: www.almustaqbal.com in their box and press enter. Voila! you are able to read almustaqbal.com without actually going to almustaqbal.com.

What is really cool is that no one will ever know about it because your browsing at that point becomes completely anonymous (just make sure you’re smart enough not to do this in an internet café)

Now, let’s say the Syrian government finds out about surfundercover.com and bans it. What can you do?

Piece of cake. Luckily, there are many nasty governments out there who want to stop you from browsing the web freely. That prompted an international wave of “net-freedom” advocacy groups to shower us with as much proxy servers as we want.

There are many websites, like www.privax.us , who offer continuously updated lists of proxy servers. Even in that is pan, all you have to do is google “proxy server” and you’ll get an endless list..

Enjoy free surfing. Maybe you’ll need it if this website is banned.

More resources:

- A website in english that explains how Indians got around their government’s ban on blogspot and typepad.

If you’re reading this in Syria, make sure you save the content of this post somewhere safe. You never know when this blog will be banned too..

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© 2009 The Beirut Spring, a Lebanese Blog.