The internet is a valuable resource. But, is the same flavour being offered to all its users? All over this site, we worry about the credibility of what people say. But what we don't say can sometimes be even more important. If you took a body of information about someone, and weeded out everything that might make her / him look bad, (s)he might come across as quite the model young person, right ?
But it would be fake.
If you are the first time internet user, then, you wouldn't know any website to visit. The first website one usually goes first are the search engines. Search engines provide free internet search service. Typical websites are: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search. Search engines list the websites in the order they think is the best for your search term. So, the results you get vary between search engine and search engine.
How do you trust the search engine? Surely, people aren't free enough to investigate and scrutinize the results produced by different search engines when they type the same query. Although they attempt to provide the best results possible, this is where the government rules come in.
In the interest of the people's well being and the security of the nation, certain countries impose laws dictating the filtering of websites by the Internet Service Providers. Such laws include banning websites that:
These are quite a few. For more, you can visit the website here .
How does it work ?
How does one censor the Internet, with its data packets traveling over myriad routes? A common approach is to use a proxy server, a computer through which all Internet connections are routed. Though a proxy server can make Internet surfing faster by caching frequently accessed pages, it can also deny access to content based on:
Not only does content filtering, as implemented through proxy servers, disallow connections to "disapproved" Internet sites, but the very act of logging all sites visited can lead users to practise self-censorship.
If technology can be used to censor Internet access, clever use of technology can also sometimes get around such censorship. Such uses include the use of external proxies - sites that are not themselves blocked, but mirror the contents of those that are - and anonymizing software that makes it difficult to trace the connection between requesting and information-providing nodes. Other hacks include "mirror writing" and "translating" from English to English.
When all else fails, there's always "sneakernet" - people willing to carry disks and tapes full of information to those who cannot access the information through the Internet. Where there's a will, there's a way ...
Next Page