Countries with Internet Censorships You Should Know About

You might be enjoying your internet right now, browsing any website you can find online and connecting to anyone in the world without restriction. But you’ll have a different perspective when you visit these countries. Internet Censorship is propelled by different reasons. While everything is available online, internet censorship puts the limit or access to certain websites that the regulators deem as undesirable. This can be implemented by individuals or big organizations for various reasons. Reasons can range from morality, religion, business, politics, or from desires coming from good intention to an attempt to suppress a country’s access to information.  When the internet is blocked by a country, it means that the networks are highly centralized, with a central routing system to receive all data. This is where all the filtering and controlling happens and the internet providers or government gets access to the main switch that can block the free passage of any data.

Let’s take a look at some of the countries and their level of censorship.

Russia

Blocking sites that advocate drug abuse, child pornography, extremism, suicide or any other information that the government believes is detrimental to the well-being of its citizens, implemented through the Russian Internet Restriction Bill passed in 2012.

Saudi Arabia

Blocking any discussion regarding political, social, or religious topics incompatible with the Islamic beliefs or the royal family. But this also helped them wage a successful digital war against Al-Qaeda and other terrorists who try to use the internet to recruit people on believing in their ideologies.

Vietnam

Blocking any content that is anti-government or anti-communist that is ever read or watched by any of the citizens primarily driven by political reasons. Social media users and bloggers are also banned from investigating any leads about government websites or authorities.

Burma

Filtering e-mails and blocking access to sites of groups that expose human rights violations or disagree with the government.

Tunisia

IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers must be filed by Internet service providers to the government. Authorities filter all content uploaded and monitors e-mails.

Turkmenistan 

The government is the sole Internet service provider, blocking access to a lot of sites and filter all e-mail accounts in Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Final Notes

Internet censorship still remains a big issue when talking about freedom and liberty. However, it is good to know about these restrictions when you’re deciding to travel or live for a while in these countries. It may be quite easy for the government to shut down any access to websites through turning off this switch but you can work around these blocks through the use of a VPN. Through VPN, you can encrypt your data and use a private network to mask your real location and access the internet without limit or restriction.