How to Bypass Blocked Sites
Not everyone has the luxury of being able to access just about any website. It could be that the network administrator at your job doesn’t want you to go to YouTube, or your government doesn’t want you to see news it doesn’t approve of. Whatever the case, there are ways to access blocked sites.
Below we go over some of the best ways you can bypass blocked websites. There is no one way that always works for everyone as they all have their pros and cons. However, each has its benefits. Let’s start.
proxies
The first method is to use a proxy, a lightweight tool that usually operates in a browser window that redirects your internet connection and gives you a fake IP address – the so-called “spoofing”. By redirecting your connection, you fool the block into letting you through, an effective method that forms the basis of all the methods we’ll go through.
However, proxies are fairly limited tools. They’re perfect for unblocking YouTube at school or work, but otherwise there’s a good chance they won’t work. Use them from a country like China that restricts internet activity and you may even get into trouble for using one. Still, if you want to give them a whirl, we like those offered by HideMyAss and Hide.me.
Virtual Private Networks
A much better option is virtual private networks. To quickly explain how VPNs work, they’re similar to proxies in that they redirect your connection and spoof your IP address, but they’re better because they also encrypt your connection, making it much more difficult to see what you’re doing.
VPNs are great for unblocking websites, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to bypass Chinese internet censorship or just see what another region’s streaming services have to offer. As well as breaking blocks, they also offer a decent level of protection against anyone trying to spy on you, so they’re a privacy tool on top of that.
However, they have one major caveat: they cost money, and the best ones like our favorite ExpressVPN will cost a lot. Most free VPNs aren’t very good and should probably be avoided, although even the good ones like PrivadoVPN will limit your usage in a number of ways. So if you don’t have any money or just don’t want to spend it, VPNs are a bad option.
shadow socks
A third option is to use Shadowsocks, a protocol designed to tunnel under the Great Firewall of China, but which can also be used as a sort of proxy. Unlike proxies, Shadowsocks encrypts the connection, but not to the same standard as a VPN. It is designed to unblock and hide traffic, not protect it from attack; For example, you should not use it for torrenting.
If that sounds like what you need, you’ll be glad to know that setting up Shadowsocks is easy with an open-source program called Outline. It does everything for you, including setting up a server, and you should be able to crack every block with just 20 minutes of setup. The only thing that costs money is the server, but it’s only $5 a month through DigitalOcean.
Goal
Our penultimate option might be interesting for those short on cash, which is to use The Onion Router or Tor to get past blocks. Tor has been known to access the dark web and the illicit goods offered there, but it’s actually a very useful way to access blocked sites as it spoofs your IP address well, on par with VPNs.
When you use Tor, you route your connection between different so-called nodes, usually run by volunteers, each with its own IP address. This makes you extremely difficult to track and makes your IP appear more “real” as the nodes are not commercially owned.
We really like Tor for getting past blocks, but the downside is that it’s slow, and we mean it slow. Therefore, it’s not the best choice for downloading large files or streaming Netflix shows. It’s also a bit trickier to use and you need to have a little know-how to use it effectively.
Decentralized VPNs
Our final pick could be the best of both worlds, an amalgamation of the ideas behind VPNs and Tor. Known as decentralized VPNs, they offer the protocols and security of VPNs with Tor’s decentralized nodes. This should make them the perfect way to break through blocks while staying safe.
However, the use of a decentralized VPN is still somewhat doubtful at this point, at least from 2022. To use one — like Orchid or Mysterium — you have to sign up for a service, buy cryptocurrency, and learn a lot of obscure jargon before you can get it working. Accessibility doesn’t seem to be high on anyone’s list right now.
That said, once it works, it’s pretty cool. While there are still some issues, as with any new technology, it could very well be that in a few years, dVPNs will be the method of choice for bypassing website blocks.