Instapaper and some us newspapers are blocked in europe now here’s how to access them anyway

The European Union’s digital privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), officially went into effect today. But some websites in the U.S. have decided to block their services entirely rather than adhere to the new regulations. Dozens of American newspapers are currently blocked in Europe and web services like Instapaper have suspended operations in the European Union for the foreseeable future.

First reported by the BBC , news sites owned by media companies like Tronc and Lee Enterprises are now totally dark in European Union countries. Some of those sites include the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the St. Louis Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel. Gizmodo was able to confirm that the websites were being blocked in Europe by using a VPN service that routed internet traffic through various European countries.

Internet users who visit sites like the L.A. Times receive a notification like the one below, explaining:

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

Attempting to reach a site like the Arizona Daily Sun from Europe gives you this notice:

We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.

The reaction to the blocks in Europe has been mixed, with some people blaming the European Union for enacting a law that they see as too burdensome on companies, while others wondered what these newspapers were doing with everyone’s data that would put them in violation of the GDPR in the first place.

Instapaper, a service that allows you to store newspaper articles in its app, announced earlier this week that it would be ceasing operations in Europe but said that it would “restore access as soon as possible.”

The GDPR was legislation passed in April of 2016 to ensure that internet users had more control over how their information was being used. Companies face enormous fines if they’re not in compliance with the data protection rules that have been laid out, which include providing more information to consumers on how data is being collected on them, and forcing companies to delete old data that’s no longer being used. At its most drastic, the EU’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has the power to fine large companies up to 4 percent of the company’s global annual turnover after the second offense. For large companies like Google and Amazon that’s in the billions of dollars. Under the new rules, lengthy user license agreements also must be in plain language and easy to understand.

And it’s not just tech companies that must comply with the law. Every organization that handles data on EU citizens, including banks, airlines, and insurance companies, must be in compliance. Today was the deadline for all companies to be in compliance with GDPR, but surveys show that anywhere from 60 to 85 percent of companies say that they’re not ready to be compliant today. It’s unclear how EU regulators will react, but so far they’ve showed no signs of being lenient. The companies did have over two years since the law’s passage to get their acts together.

Mark Zuckerberg, currently embroiled in scandal over Facebook’s mishandling of private user information, told members of European Parliament on Tuesday that his company would be ready to comply with the GDPR by today. But we really won’t know until these companies face some kind of audit. Best of luck with that, EU. Judging from Zuck’s performance earlier this week, Facebook doesn’t care too much about transparency.

Update, 7:55am: NPR appears to be giving Europeans a choice of either still being tracked with cookies and other tracking technologies, or just viewing NPR online in plain text.

The strict European privacy policy went into effect today.

Published May 25, 2018 Updated May 21, 2021, 2:58 pm CDT

Europe’s strict privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), goes into effect today—and not everyone made the deadline. Many U.S. companies have reportedly blocked their sites in the region rather than make the necessary changes required to adhere to the rules.

Dozens of high-profile newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times , the New York Daily News , the St. Louis Dispatch , the Chicago Tribune , and the Orlando Sentinel can no longer be accessed in Europe. These sites are part of the Tronc and Lee Enterprises media publishing groups.

Readers in Europe are greeted with a message explaining that the service is temporarily unavailable. (If you’re in the U.S., you can test this by connecting to a VPN server in Europe.)

“Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the E.U. market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism,” some sites read.

Another error message references the GDPR.

“We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the E.U, which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.”

Other U.S. publications, like the Washington Post and Time, require users to accept new terms. You’ve probably received dozens of emails over the past few months from various companies explaining changes made to their privacy policies and/or terms of service. Those were spurred by the GDPR, an ambiguous set of rules that will have a profound effect on companies who do business in the E.U., including many U.S. firms.

Shifting the balance of power back to users, the GDPR requires companies to gain clear consent before they can collect data. It also gives customers the right to request access to information companies store on them. They can then ask that certain information be deleted, corrected, or delivered in a portable form for download. Companies must also disclose any security breaches 72 hours after they are first discovered.

READ MORE:

The GDPR was passed in April 2016, giving companies more than two years to prepare for them. The E.U.-wide blackouts indicate companies would rather stop offering their service to users than potentially face hefty penalties. If a company violates GDPR rules, even by failing to comply with a user’s data request, they face up to €20 million fines or 4 percent of their global revenue.

“It didn’t just fall from heaven,” Andrea Jelinek, chairwoman of the new European Data Protection Board, said in a statement, according to the New York Times. “Everyone has had plenty of time to prepare.”

Several other U.S. services, not only newspapers, also halted operations in Europe. TV broadcaster A&E Networks shut Europe out from watching A&E, History, and Lifetime channels. The digital ad company Drawbridge and bookmarking app Instapaper have also closed up shop.

The GDPR went live just days after Mark Zuckerberg testified before the European Parliament to reassure users and lawmakers in the region that their data is safe. Fear about how companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon use the wealth of sensitive information they collect on users reached new heights earlier this year after Cambridge Analytica exploited the data of 87 million Facebook users.

Because two years wasn’t enough time to prepare

Folks trying to read the NY Daily News, say, or the Chicago Tribune – the third-biggest US daily newspaper – online from a location within the EU have been blocked from visiting the websites due to new data protection laws.

Visitors in the bloc trying to load articles from the Tribune, or stablemates the Los Angeles Times – the fifth-biggest daily – and the Orlando Sentinel are shown the same error message from publisher Tronc:

Click to enlarge

“Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries,” it reads.

“We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.”

The finger is pointed at Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which, although it is only just being enforced today, was adopted on 14 April 2016 – meaning organisations have had more than two years to prepare.

However, that doesn’t seem to have been enough time for Tronc, with all of its sites directing to URLs: etc (with requisite paper name appended).

A similar message is going out to users trying to visit sites owned by media and entertainment brand A+E, including A&E (Arts & Entertainment), Lifetime and History. The organization’s response is more succinct, with the redirect sending you to and stating simply: “This content is not available in your area.”

Much-loved American public radio org NPR, meanwhile, decided to provide another option: send anyone who doesn’t agree to cookies and the like for personalised content to a plain-text site – or back in time to 1996.

These publishers are not alone in their black-and-white approach to compliance. Over the past few weeks a number of companies that believed they were going to fail to meet the bar appear to have decided it was easier to pull the plug on EU users.

That includes Pinterest-owned Instapaper – the app to save and read articles – this week announced it would be unavailable for users in the EU “as it makes changes” in light of GDPR. Boss Brian Donohue apologised on Twitter.

Yeah. I can’t comment on specifics other than to say that I’m actively working on resolving it. Sorry. :-\

Email unsubscribing service Unroll.Me has also said it is stopping its services for EU residents on 23 May – a move it says is temporary until it can be sure it is compliant.

“For our customers in the EU and in the European Economic Area, the Unroll.Me team is committed to re-introducing our service as quickly as possible so please stay tuned for updates,” the company said.

However, the site seems to be happy to take users’ word for it, with a banner asking if they live in the EU and European Economic Area. Your London-based correspondent clicked “No” and was sent through to the normal site (yes, it gives you a pop-up saying the service is temporarily unavailable).

Meanwhile, some firms have decided to call it a day: social media reputation score site Klout went kaput today, with its owner deciding that shuttering it was the best route to compliance.

Other companies seem content with making consent for cookies as arduous as possible.

Take Verizon-owned Oath – parent company of HuffPo, Yahoo! and more – which offers users the chance to decide which of its advertising and tracking partners they are happy to share their info with, doing so by offering them a list of quite literally hundreds of organisations, all of which appear to have a default opt-in.

Christ, I thought the cookie warning was bad but this GDPR nonsense is next level

One Reg reader told us that until yesterday, there wasn’t even a “deselect all” button, with others writing to tell us about trawling through pages and pages of advertisers clicking on every button. Which at least evens the playing field between companies beginning with “A” and those with “Z”.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen evidence of internet-connected fridges and lightbulbs, and even mouse drivers, and more, pop up messages on screens asking for punters to accept updated GDPR-friendly privacy policies.

Is there a site you can no longer visit because the firm has had its head in the sand for the last two years? Let us know. ®

GDPR has taken effect: What does it mean?

General Data Protection Regulation will impact the way personal data is managed across the globe. What does it mean and how does it affect you?

It’s anything but a happy General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) day for several major U.S. news organizations as their websites are temporarily blocked in Europe as a new data privacy law goes into effect today.

Websites such as the LA Times, NY Daily News and Chicago Tribune are all temporarily blocked this morning, saying their content is unavailable in most European countries.

Anyone trying to access the sites, which also include those owned by Tronc and Lee Enterprises (examples include Orlando Sentinel [Tronc], Arizona Daily Sun and the St. Louis Dispatch [Lee Entperises]) see a message explaining that the website is working with European authorities on trying to get access back as quickly as possible.

According to Gizmodo, the statement on the LA Times website reads: Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.”

The EU calls GDPR the most sweeping change in data protection rules in a generation, but there are some tricky issues surrounding its rollout.

Companies are trying to understand what level of protection different data needs, whether this could force them to change the way they do business and innovate, and how to manage the EU’s 28 national data regulators, who enforce the law.

“Once you try to codify the spirit (of the law) — then you get unintended consequences,” said Lars Andersen, whose London-based My Nametags business handles names and phone numbers of children. Andersen said. “There’s been a challenge for us: What actually do I have to do? There are a million sort of answers.”

“As technology increasingly becomes the fabric of business and society, its critical that it be trusted,” David Kenny, SVP of IBM Watson and Cloud Platform, told Fox News. “IBM has been helping our customers to be ready for GDPR, and beyond that, we are calling on the entire tech industry to adhere to principles of ensuring all AI systems are secure, transparent and keep data private.”

Lee Enterprises, the fourth largest newspaper group in the U.S., publishing 46 newspapers across 21 states, has a statement (by way of BBC) that reads:

“We’re sorry. This site is temporarily unavailable. We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.”

Bookmarking app Instapaper, which is owned by Pinterest, has also temporarily shut off its access to European users.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia

Matt Novak

The European Union’s digital privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has officially gone into effect. But some websites in the US have decided to block their services entirely rather than adhere to the new regulations. Dozens of US newspapers are currently blocked in Europe and web services like Instapaper have suspended operations in the European Union for the foreseeable future.

First reported by the BBC, news sites owned by media companies like Tronc and Lee Enterprises are now totally dark in European Union countries. Some of those sites include the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the St. Louis Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel.

Gizmodo was able to confirm that the websites were being blocked in Europe by using a VPN service that routed internet traffic through various European countries.

Internet users who visit sites like the L.A. Times receive a notification like the one below, explaining:

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

Attempting to reach a site like the Arizona Daily Sun from Europe gives you this notice:

We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time.

The reaction to the blocks in Europe has been mixed, with some people blaming the European Union for enacting a law that they see as too burdensome on companies, while others wondered what these newspapers were doing with everyone’s data that would put them in violation of the GDPR in the first place.

So the @NYDailyNews has blocked Europe from it’s website because of GDPR. Makes you wonder what they have been doing with our data .

Instapaper, a service that allows you to store newspaper articles in its app, announced earlier this week that it would be ceasing operations in Europe but said that it would “restore access as soon as possible.”

The GDPR was legislation passed in April of 2016 to ensure that internet users had more control over how their information was being used. Companies face enormous fines if they’re not in compliance with the data protection rules that have been laid out, which include providing more information to consumers on how data is being collected on them, and forcing companies to delete old data that’s no longer being used.

At its most drastic, the EU’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has the power to fine large companies up to 4 per cent of the company’s global annual turnover after the second offence. For large companies like Google and Amazon that’s in the billions of dollars. Under the new rules, lengthy user licence agreements also must be in plain language and easy to understand.

And it’s not just tech companies that must comply with the law. Every organisation that handles data on EU citizens, including banks, airlines, and insurance companies, must be in compliance. Today was the deadline for all companies to be in compliance with GDPR, but surveys show that anywhere from 60 to 85 per cent of companies say that they’re not ready to be compliant today.

It’s unclear how EU regulators will react, but so far they have showed no signs of being lenient. The companies did have over two years since the law’s passage to get their acts together.

Mark Zuckerberg, currently embroiled in scandal over Facebook’s mishandling of private user information, told members of European Parliament on Tuesday that his company would be ready to comply with the GDPR by today. But we really won’t know until these companies face some kind of audit. Best of luck with that, EU. Judging from Zuck’s performance earlier this week, Facebook doesn’t care too much about transparency.

Researchers from the University of East Anglia have revealed the key way to tell if your loss of smell or taste are likely to be linked to coronavirus, or simply the common cold

• 08:56, 19 AUG 2020
• Updated 08:58, 19 AUG 2020

Scientists have revealed an easy to way to tell if your loss of smell is due to coronavirus or the common cold.

Alongside a high temperature and new, continuous cough, a loss of smell or taste is also on the NHS’s list of key Covid-19 symptoms.

But knowing whether your loss of smell or taste is a result of Covid-19 or simply a cold can be tricky.

Now, researchers from the University of East Anglia have revealed the key way to tell if your symptoms are likely to be linked to coronavirus.

According to the team, Covid-19 patients with smell loss don’t tend to have a blocked, stuffy or runny nose, and can breathe freely.

Meanwhile, those with smell loss cannot tell the difference between bitter or sweet – something that those with the common cold can still do.

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To reach these conclusions, the researchers carried out smell and taste tests on 30 participants – 10 with coronavirus, 10 with bad colds, and 10 healthy people.

The tests revealed that smell loss was more profound in the Covid-19 patients, who were also unable to discern bitter or sweet tastes.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Carl Philpott, who led the study, said: “There really do appear to be distinguishing features that set the coronavirus apart from other respiratory viruses.

After waiting seven hours under the sizzling African sun, John Shikuboni hoped to fill his empty sack with free corn stored in a warehouse here.

But an aid official told Shikuboni and about 200 other hungry men, women and children that he could no longer distribute the corn because the Zambian government had ruled that the genetically modified grain was not safe for them.

“Please give us the food,” pleaded an elderly blind man wearing a threadbare shirt. “We don’t care if it is poisonous because we are dying anyway.”

Many Zambians in rural areas have resorted to eating leaves, twigs and even poisonous berries and nuts to cope with the worst food crisis in a decade hitting southern Africa. Still, their government is refusing to accept donations of genetically modified corn that the United Nations and aid agencies say could help ease the starvation and suffering of about 2.5 million Zambians.

The United States, United Nations and humanitarian aid groups insist that the U.S.-donated corn is safe and identical to grain eaten daily by people in the United States, Canada and other countries. But Zambian officials say they fear that the gene-altered corn poses health risks to their citizens.

“We would rather starve than get something toxic,” said Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who declared a food emergency in the nation three months ago.

Privately, aid officials say the Zambian government is looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The Bush administration has dispatched to Zambia its top aid official, Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, to persuade Mwanawasa to accept the food.

Natsios is expected to meet with Mwanawasa today in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.

“I’m going to tell him he needs to reverse that decision,” Natsios said in a telephone interview. “It’s endangering people’s lives, and we’re going to have massive losses of life if this policy remains in place.”

A savage confluence of events–drought, bad governance and disease–means that about 13 million people in six southern African countries face starvation. Many of them now rely on rations from the U.N. food agency to survive.

U.N. officials say they must have $500 million to avert a famine. So far, the United States has been the most willing donor, shipping a few hundred thousand tons of food to southern Africa.

But the U.S. gifts have ignited a debate in the region about the safety of grain whose genes have been modified to produce higher yields and bolster resistance to drought, diseases and herbicides.

Southern Africa is not alone in its suspicion of genetically modified food. The European Union bans many modified products, and some European scientists say the crops could cause allergic reactions in consumers.

Leaders of several African countries say they find themselves in a dilemma: Feed their people food they believe causes allergic reactions, or let them die. Agricultural officials also worry that the grain would be planted and, through cross-pollination, would contaminate their natural varieties.

Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland agreed to accept the U.S. donations after the World Health Organization–and several U.S. agencies–certified the U.S. corn as safe. Zimbabwe and Mozambique accepted the grain on the condition that it would be milled before distribution to prevent people from planting it.

But Zambia–a landlocked nation slightly larger than Texas–has been the lone holdout, saying its top scientists had warned about the alleged health risks of gene-altered corn. The country’s agriculture minister said Zambia would import non-altered food to feed its hungry.

“There’s no way we can help them if they don’t accept the food,” James Morris, director of the U.N. World Food Program, said from his Rome office Tuesday night. “No one is going to step up with donations of non-GM [genetically modified] corn to fill the gap. This is food we have complete confidence in.”

Despite the official skepticism in Zambia and other countries, some prominent African scientists have been lobbying for African nations to embrace genetic engineering to secure the food supply and increase efficiency and crop yields.

“GM crops and foods are just one part of the overall strategy to ensure sufficient food” for Africa, said Jennifer Thomson, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. “Europe has enough food. They don’t need GM foods. But we have different needs.”

Natsios, the USAID administrator, said he recently was heartened by the Zambian government’s decision to let aid workers distribute genetically modified corn to Congolese and Angolan refugees living in camps here.

He said the Zambian government is probably trying to use the gene-altered corn issue to gain leverage in its relations with the United States. He noted that the United States greeted Mwanawasa’s election last year with a lukewarm response after the opposition and other groups alleged that the balloting was rigged.

For the good of starving Zambians, Natsios said, Mwanawasa “needs to separate the diplomatic issue from this [food] issue.”

In Shimabala, a farming village 40 miles south of Lusaka, Shikuboni and others say they hope the government swiftly reverses its policy.

Only recently, Shimabala was a bountiful collection of farms producing maize, cassava and other crops. But the drought has reduced the corn fields to parched brown earth with only a few dying shrubs.

Steven Grabiner, a food aid official, said the thousands of bags of food in his warehouse could feed Shimabala’s 300 families for at least a month.

“I would rather eat that maize than die because the government has no alternative to the hunger problem,” said Bweengwa Nzala, a 28-year-old farmhand. “The government was elected by us the people, and now we are hungry. We want the government to help feed us instead of forcing us to resort to eating wild fruits like monkeys.”

“We are not afraid,” said Florence Chisanga, who also waited in vain at Grabiner’s food distribution center. “If we die tomorrow, no problem. What we want is food.”

Times staff writer Maharaj reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and special correspondent Mukwita from Shimabala.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke harshly on Wednesday about countries that seek to keep out refugees. But his words may have fallen on deaf ears.

A number of European nations have made clear they aren’t willing to welcome many newcomers, despite the current crisis. The resistance has been heard loudest in Central Europe, although Western Europe has not exactly thrown open its doors either.

“Pushing boats from piers, setting fire to refugee camps or turning a blind eye to poor and helpless people — that is not Europe,” Juncker said. “The Europe I want to live in is illustrated by those who are helping. The Europe that I don’t want to live in is one that is refusing those who are in need.”

Juncker announced an emergency quota system that would spread out the deluge of refugees across the EU member states. Twenty-two of the 28 states will be required to open their doors to a total of 160,000 people.

And here’s what the response looks like:

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban called Juncker’s plan “mad.”

Orban prefers to see refugees and asylum seekers bypass Hungary in their journey west. He built a barbed-wire fence along Hungary’s entire border with Serbia and just last week introduced a new law making any fence crossings a criminal offense.

The prime minister has even invoked religious fears about the rising presence of Muslims in Europe to defend his anti-immigration stance. “Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?” he wrote in an op-ed last week.

Orban has also accused Germany of worsening the influx. “As long as Austria and Germany don’t say clearly that they won’t take in any more migrants, several million new immigrants will come to Europe,” he told Austrian broadcaster ORF.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka is “convinced that Europe does not need new plans” for resolving the crisis. He wants any cooperation on refugees to be voluntary.

Although Interior Minister Milan Chovanec has said the Czech Republic is willing to provide “financial, technological, human or material aid,” the country has detained some refugees and even written numbers on their arms with felt-tip pens.

A recent poll found that 94 percent of Czechs believe the EU should deport all refugees.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said this week that “migrants arriving in Europe do not want to stay in Slovakia. They don’t have a base for their religion here, their relatives, they would run away anyway.” Unlike the diverse societies in Western Europe, Slovakia “has no migration experience,” according to Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak.

Both Fico and Sobotka have pushed for the Schengen Area’s outer borders to be strengthened to keep people out. The Schengen zone encompasses the 22 of 28 EU member states who allow travel across their mutual borders without passport or customs controls.

Xenophobic rhetoric has begun to pervade Slovak culture. Television ads depict a Slovak family rejecting foreign and diseased chickens, opting instead for well-bred domestic chicken.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis has said his nation is only willing to take in a total of 1,785 refugees and plans to reject Juncker’s proposed allotment of 4,646.

Because Romania is not part of the Schengen Area, it doesn’t expect to face the same heavy waves of refugees and migrants. “This can’t happen. . We’re not part of Schengen, and migrants must fulfill some rules if they want to enter Romania,” Iohannis said on Monday.

Lest it seem like the resistance to accepting refugees is confined to Central Europe, note that Denmark has also taken a stand against helping. The Western European nation is reacting to the rising power of right-wing parties there. Most notably, the Danish People’s Party finished second in the parliamentary election in June and has pledged to strengthen border control and cut the number of asylum seekers.

Denmark’s anti-immigrant tactics have been targeted and strategic. The Danish government spent 30,000 euros on an advertising campaign in major Lebanese newspapers discouraging migration to Denmark. The ads touch upon all of the difficulties of assimilating in Denmark: Newcomers must learn the language, those granted permanent residency cannot bring their families over for one year, and welfare benefits for refugees have been slashed by 50 percent.

#Lebanon | Denmark puts ad in Lebanese newspapers about “tightening regulations”

Western European countries generally are struggling with the tide of refugees, despite having advocated for the new quota system.

France announced Monday that it would accept 24,000 asylum seekers, which many view as an inadequate number. Germany expects up to take in 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers by the end of the year. According to a poll in Le Parisien, 55 percent of French people are opposed to increasing the number of refugees the nation accepts the way Germany has.

Many popular websites are only available for specific countries. The reasons for blocking vary and could even be two-way. For one, it could be the site’s prerogative not to share content with people from specific countries, whether for legal reasons or because the content is not applicable for another country.

It could also be a form of censorship. At least 25 countries block certain websites so that their citizens could not access them. The reasons range from political, to cultural and social causes, to simple censorship.

Regardless of the reasons why they’re blocked, it may be possible to access blocked websites anyway. Here are some methods you could try:

1. Use anti-censorship tools.

The good news is that there are groups of programmers and developers who make it their life’s work to combat censorship in any form. They have come up with a lot of tools that could help you bypass these blocks.

Free online proxy sites.

If you do a quick Google search of online proxy websites, you will probably get dozens of websites that allow you to access blocked websites for free. The best thing about these services is that you only use the browser to visit the blocked sites; you do not have to download and install anything on your computer.

Some of the most widely used free online proxy sites:

After you find a proxy site, all you have to do is enter the URL of the blocked site. You should be able to access the site with no problems.

It works because the site thinks that you are from another country, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, as the online proxy service is presenting a UK or US-based IP.

Free proxy software

A proxy software works very much like online proxy sites, but you would need to download and/or install it onto your machine to use it. You may want to be very thorough with the virus and malware scanning before doing so.

The good news with proxy software is that it often has higher traffic limits and can allow you to do more things than an online proxy site.

Examples of proxy software:

• FreeProxy
• GappProxy
• X-Proxy

Virtual private networks

With a virtual private network (VPN) you will be accessing a network that works just like the Internet. You will be using your own Internet access to connect to the VPN, and the VPN in turn will allow you to access blocked websites.

To better understand how a VPN works, think of it as a computer that can access the blocked sites you have. You then use your own computer to access that computer remotely. Once you’re in, there are no more blocked sites.

There are free VPNs on the Internet that you can access either through your browser or by downloading and installing software. Some of the most popular include ProXPN, OpenVPN and HotSpotShield.

2. Access blocked websites indirectly.

If you need content on these sites, and could not successfully connect to a VPN or find proxy programs on the Internet, there are several ways to view these sites indirectly. Here are some suggestions:

Google Translate

Type in the URL of the blocked site you have into the translate box and you can view the blocked site in the translated portion of the page.

Google Cache

When indexing Web pages, Google keeps a copy of it in its cache, so all you have to do is search for the blocked website and click on the link that says “Cached” in the search results.

If the blocked website has an RSS feed, you can still view the blocked pages using an RSS reader. All you have to do is add the RSS feed to the reader.

If your favorite blocked website does not have an RSS feed, you can simply create an RSS feed for it using a service similar to Page2RSS. You just have to enter the URL into the box to generate an RSS feed for it, then add it to your reader.

The next time you need to access a website from another country and find out you’re blocked from accessing it, try any of these methods and see which one works best and most conveniently for you. Don’t forget to come back here and share your experiences to let us know how it worked for you.