Many countries around the world adopt very advanced measures to block free access to the Internet, thus showing users on their territory only sites approved or aligned with the policies of the government in charge. These restrictions operate at the backbone network level (ie, the carriers that carry the Internet across the nation), so it is not possible to overcome them without using very advanced obfuscation methods.
Looking over why internet censorship is applied (usually for very authoritarian forms of government). The guide below will show you how countries censor the internet and which effective methods are used, how to bypass this type of control, obviously by paying attention to what is done in authoritarian states (where one also risks imprisonment or the death penalty for accessing prohibited information).
Why do governments block access to sites?
In poorer countries with more or less veiled dictatorships, the government fears that people could organize street riots over the internet or access unfiltered information, which could put the organs of power or the people who manage politics in a bad light nationwide. The Internet is an effective medium for organizing events, flash mobs, and riots.
Authoritarian governments, therefore, block the most used social networks in the world (Facebook and Twitter), but also chat such as WhatsApp and Skype are often censored or put under control, to prevent people from spreading messages and organizing meetings.
In China, this is the reason for the censorship of all Western sites that the government cannot control, but it is not the only one. Those in power are afraid of ruining their image on the outside and want to hide what is happening inside the borders.
In countries like China and, especially, North Korea, they are very concerned with hiding from the population what they think of them on the outside and, at the same time, they are keen to show only positive things to other nations around the world.
In some countries, such as Arabs, there is also “social” censorship on the internet to prevent the population from seeing sites dealing with topics such as sex, gambling, illegal drugs, etc.
In Russia, for example, with the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, all information is heavily censored, and only information approved by the government can be read. In fact, all accessible information on the Internet is blocked, with access permitted only to institutional sites or news sites “aligned” with the government initiative.
Another type of censorship is that of “self-defense”: information is also censored to overcome censorship so that no one can find out how to overcome the blocks and filters imposed by the state. In essence, the reason for the censorship on the internet is to prevent certain news and information from becoming the public domain.
The most blocked websites in the world are YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, the Google site, free blogs made with Blogger, WordPress, and many others.
How governments block the internet
One of the most effective and simple ways to block access to particular websites within a country is to ask ISPs to block them by blocking DNS requests. This method is also used in Italy to block access to pirate sites (which reside on foreign servers) obscured by the Guardia di Finanza.
The most oppressive regimes can reinforce this blockade if the entire Internet infrastructure is owned by the state. In general, a provider can prevent access to a website in these ways:
- IP address blocking
- Transmission level filter
- Block by Autonomous System Number (ASN)
The last block is very advanced and allows you to block access to almost all Internet sites effectively; in very simple terms, it is an identification number of a range of IP addresses assigned to a country’s provider. If a government wants to block a website, it can “fool” its infrastructure with a smaller ASN that excludes the IP of the site to be blocked. The government then forces routers to think that the IP address of a site like YouTube is hosted within the country, preventing access to it.
In China, this advanced control system is called the Great Firewall and is one of the most effective in the world, as the police always manage to trace those seeking free information or information from abroad.
Which are the countries that censor the internet the most
At the time of writing, the countries that apply advanced censorship systems for Internet access are the following:
- Internet use in North Korea is extremely limited. Some North Koreans (4%) can access an internal Intranet that connects to state newspapers and institutional sites without any possibility of access to foreign sites.
- In Iran, most Western and American sites such as Facebook and Twitter are blocked, as are political opposition and sexually explicit sites. However, methods of bypassing blocks such as proxy servers and other VPN software work. Iran has long announced its intention to create its own closed and fully monitored Internet network.
- China is famous for its “Great Firewall” which is a firewall that functions as a controlled barrier for internet access; the Chinese can therefore freely browse the permitted sites. There are no Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Blogger, but there are equivalent sites for the Chinese, obviously controlled by the government.
- Cuba has recently opened the internet, so few Cubans surf. Access to the Web takes place through public facilities where people must first register by identifying themselves.
- In Arab countries, sites that talk about politics are monitored or blocked. Since the Arab Spring, Arab authorities have stepped up arrests of opposing bloggers and people who have posted news and content deemed offensive to rulers.
- The internet is censored in almost all of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, with stronger restrictions in dictatorial countries such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
- Eritrea is one of the countries with fewer fundamental freedoms in the world, so much so that the authorities can even read emails without asking for permission. However, the vast majority of people do not have access to the Internet, and, probably, it is not even the main problem since it is one of the poorest countries in the world.
- Turkey has blocked access to many popular sites and social networks, similarly, albeit much less so, to what has been seen in China or other Arab countries.
- Russia has joined the list of countries that censor the Internet. Before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine is carried out thorough checks on all communications (emails, chats, messages, etc.), with the outbreak of the war, the control system has intensified, and now many famous sites, search engines, and famous social networks such as Instagram, now completely blocked. With the war in Ukraine, the hypothesis was also made that Russia could completely detach itself from the world internet, in a similar way to what happens in North Korea.
Those who travel to these countries must comply with the strict rules on surfing the Internet, avoid free information or anti-freedom sites and use advanced protection systems on all phones, tablets, or PCs in their possession.
It is possible to use an immediate online tool to check if a site is blocked in China, Russia, Turkey, and other parts of the world where internet censorship is active.
The same site also has the world map of internet censorship (the one in the figure above), with a detailed explanation of all the sites blacked out in the various parts of the world.
How to overcome the blocks for the censored internet
Blocks enforced by authoritarian nations are thought to be difficult for the common user to overcome. Those who travel to these countries and those who live in Russia or China can avoid being monitored (and spied on) themselves and can access all the web pages they want using an advanced obfuscation system, available only through a paid VPN.
By installing an advanced VPN like NordVPN before departure in one of the countries listed above (or in “smell of censorship”, even if not present in the previous list) we can bypass most of the active filters on the Internet line by choosing the obfuscated servers, which they mask Internet traffic with random, simple data.
Those who want to try a free protection system can combine the protection of a free VPN with the Tor connection, so as to apply a double layer of protection on the connection. This isn’t guaranteed to work, but it’s the only way to try and bypass the internet censorship filters.
Conclusions
Internet censorship is a consolidated reality in many nations around the world: the control of information and news is essential to be able to maintain power for a long time and any “contrary voice” and any uncontrolled information must be blocked and censored. For this reason, we always recommend using a VPN when we are abroad on vacation or for work, even in countries where censorship is not suspected.
