==Lesson 3 – Goodbye Censorship!==
Many countries around the world have installed software and underlying infrastructure that prevents Internet users within those countries from accessing certain websites and Internet services. Companies, schools and public libraries often use similar software to protect their employees, students and patrons from material that they consider distracting or harmful. This kind of filtering technology comes in a number of different forms. Some filters block a site based on its IP address, while others blacklist certain domain names or keywords contained in web pages or your search queries.
Regardless of what filtering methods are present, it is nearly always possible to evade them by relying on intermediary computers, outside your country, to reach blocked services for you. This process is often called censorship circumvention, or simply circumvention, and the intermediary computers are called proxies. Proxies, too, come in many different forms. Some Internet services such as RSS readers and online translators perform the function of a proxy without necessarily being created for circumvention. There are also especially dedicated proxy servers, virtual private networks multiple-proxy anonymity networks. It is difficult to say in advance which particular technique will work to bypass the censorship mechanisms in place in your country and it is worthwhile to be aware of several different methods. Each offers its own particular method for getting around restrictions, at the same time each method is vulnerable in its own way. This chapter describes the various ways to circumvent censorship and explains when these methods may or may not work.
* [[Internet Censorship]]
* [[Circumventing Censorship]]