How to view websites banned in thailand

[NathanV23]

Just read that Thaksin and Co. have decided to ban access to more websites from Thailand. For all of you that believe that you should be able to look at what you want, you can get around this pretty easily. Go to www.surfola.com. There's a program called proxy redirector 1.0. You can download it and try it for free and I think it costs around $30 per 6 months.

Anyway, say you want to access website X, but it has been banned in Thailand. You go to surfola.com and log into your account. From there, you surf the web through them. To the ISP providers here, no matter how many websites you visit, it looks like you're visiting surfola.com the entire time. If and when surfola.com itself is banned, they put up redirector sites which aren't blocked and get you to their page.

No, I don't work for them, I just came across it the other day and think it may be of much use here as the government continues deciding what is best for you. On any sites where cookies or java must be enabled, it doesn't seem to work, but it is still a very useful tool. I hear its becoming more and more popular in countries like China an Iran. Enjoy!

[Brian]

We suffer from web censorship here in Saudi Arabia. I'm not interested in looking at censored graphics, but if i want to read censored sites then I just view the Google Cached version.

Just do a normal google search, and instead of "left clicking" on the link, "right click" instead. Then select "cached snapshot of page".

It works for most text based pages.

[NathanV23]

Thanks! Seems to work for text and more simple than surfola too.

[Thetyim]

Brian,

"Then select "cached snapshot of page".

Sounds good but I do not get this option when I right click

Any ideas why ?

[tomisan]

No need to pay for anonymous web surfing. Plenty of *free* anonymous proxy servers out there. This proxy is pretty good.

But if you really want to stay away from this censor shit, grab this cool script and install it on your own server (unfortunately for this to work, you need a web hosting company that will allow outgoing socket connections; most free CGI servers doesn't).

--

Anonymity is not a crime.

[Jade]

www.anonymizer.com works really well

[Brian]

Thetyim,

What's the site that you are trying to view? I'll have a look to see if I can get it.

Brian

[Thetyim]

Brian,

Thanks,  it doesn't work for any website.

I do not get the option on the drop down menu

I am running Windows Me and IE6

I also have Star Downloader.

[tomisan]

www.anonymizer.com works really well

Sure, but it's NOT FREE!!! These lame ducks charge for simple technology, that's been free since the advent of Internet.

--

Anonymity is not a crime.

[Brian]

I do not get the option on the drop down menu

What options do you get? Your setup doesn't sound unusual so i can't understand why it isn't working for you. When i right click, the drop down list is:

Open

Open in new window

save target as

print target

-------------------------

copy shortcut

-------------------------

cached snapshot of page

similar pages

backward links

translate page

---------------

properties

[wolf5370]

Thetyim/Brian,

the Web Site designer can put Meta tags in to the Web pages to tell the Search Robot (code that captures web site links and snap shots for inclusion in search engines) to capture snapshots or not. So this wikll not work for those sites.

Cheers,

[Brian]

Thats right, but I don't think that it is widely practised.

Thetyim says that it isn't working for any links which is a bit odd.

Thetyim, I just noticed that in the Google search results, that at the end of each listed entry, there are two links. One says cached and the next is similar pages

So you should also get the google cached page by clicking on cached

I didn't see the forest for the trees. I have installed the google toolbar that you can get here

Then you don't even need to go to the google search. If you see a link on any page that you know is blocked, then you can just right click on it and select the cached snapshot.

[Thetyim]

Thanks Brian, the link to "cached" works OK

[tongkatali]

censorship...uhm

i would love to hear what kind of sites you want to visit that are banned in thailand (except sex,porno stuff)...

politics? etnics? etc...

cheers

[NathanV23]

Nothing inparticular to be honest. I just don't like a government telling me what information I may look at. Even if it just starts with xxx sites, they may quickly get used to the idea and use the same means to block the news they don't like as we see in so many countries.

[Axel]

I am a user, no expert and at this moment don't know any "banned" sites. Last year two english magazines were banned. The Economist one of them and I could not reach the site directly. Logged into google.uk, searched, found and clicked on the Economist and got it. May be not professional but it worked. The link did afterwards not appear in history.

Perhaps an expert can figure this one out.

[khanom]

Using a free public proxy is by far the easiest way to get around this. The fitering in los is not very sophisticated compared to, say, the PRC.

There are dozens of sites offering lists. Here's the one with the obvious URL:

http://www.freepublicproxies.com

Grab an IP from the list, and put it in Netscape or IE's proxy settings.

In Mozilla/Netscape 6, it's under Edit : Preferences : Advanced : Proxies. Put the IP in the Manual Proxy Configuration box.

One site that is filtered (at least for me using KSC) is a Macintosh News site - http://www.macintouch.com. I can ping the server, but port 80 (web) is blocked. Using a public proxy gets me in just fine.

They said they wouldn't filter on keyword, but I suspect they are.

Of course all this is quite ridiculous considering that certain other sites remain unblocked i.e. a common english swear word beginning with the letter "f" -.com

I've been thinking of writing a script to probe websites against a known list (probably such a thing already exists) to see which names are filtered.