Accessing Blogs with a VPN

blogs Blogs are the hallmark of new media. Bloggers the world over are using this platform to express their political views, provide up-to-date news in real time, and interact socially with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, many relevant blogs are becoming inaccessible in some parts of the world due to Internet censorship. Thankfully, a VPN can remedy this problem.

If you are a faithful reader of some popular blogs, here is some information you may find very useful as well as information on using a VPN to maintain access.

What is a blog?

Strictly speaking, a blog is an online journal. In the early days of blogging, blogs were used primarily for social purposes. A blogger could post personal updates and reflections on things they found interesting. Today, blogs serve a more important purpose. They are often used to provide political commentary and news which is untainted by the influence of the major news networks.

One of the more popular examples of a modern blog is the Huffington Post. Started by Ariana Huffington as a relatively small venture, the Huffington Post has expanded to provide some of the best news and commentary on the Internet. For entertainment enthusiasts, Perez Hilton’s blog has also become a sensation.

While these blogs are extremely popular, more relevant to our discussion are blogs which are emerging in areas like the Arab region and China. These blogs provide unfiltered news and information, often in real time, about political events. They have become so popular that many countries which restrict Internet freedom have engaged in blocking them via the firewalls on their proxy servers.

Why would countries block a blog?

In countries where the Internet is tightly regulated—Saudi Arabia, UAE, and China, for instance—the control of information is a high priority. These governments go to extremes to limit what can be accessed from within the country. For bloggers, this can be the kiss of death.

Many bloggers tend to be somewhat controversial in their coverage of local politics. They seem themselves as on outpost for freedom of the press and proponents of unfettered Internet access. This type of criticism of the government is frowned upon and therefore many blogs are considered a threat.

In February of 2012, Google announced that it would censor blogs on a “per country” basis. Google owns and operates one of the most popular blogging platforms called Blogger. What Google chose to do was redirect blog traffic to country-specific domains, thereby opening the door to state-controlled censorship. India was one of the first countries to institute this technology. In the immediate aftermath of Google’s decision, India sent 39 requests to the Internet giant for content removal. The greatest impact of this decision was that many blogs disappeared from Google search results, which pretty much voided their availability.

Blogs and a VPN

Let’s look at the subject of blogs and a VPN from a couple of different perspectives. First, we’ll talk about the reading side of things.

If you like to travel, or perhaps your job demands that you visit different countries, don’t take it for granted that your favorite blog will be available. Censorship of blogs is one of the reasons the nickname The Great Firewall of China was given to that Asian nation. In China, bloggers have even been imprisoned for posting things considered objectionable by the government, but we’ll get to that in just a moment.

Blocking by IP address is usually the method employed to censor blogs and make them unavailable in certain countries. You can easily override this restriction by using our VPN to change your IP address and bypass restriction via an encrypted VPN tunnel. That way, if China or Oman or the UAE happens to be blocking a news blog that you usually read at home in the US or UK, you can appear to be visiting the site from home and the internet service provider will not know you are accessing the site while connected via the encrypted vpn account. The process of setting up your VPN account to preserve access to your favorite blogs is very simple, and we provide detailed setup instructions.

Now, let’s talk about the writing side of blogs. Are you a blogger? Do you have a considerable number of readers who visit your blog regularly? If you host and publish your blog inside the US or UK, it might be to your benefit to use a VPN to research your news stories or other posts. It has been demonstrated that even the US has stepped up its monitoring of social networks, Google searches, and who knows what else. If your blog offers a lot of controversial content, the encryption of a VPN might be useful to you as you surf the Net.

Thankfully, blogging in the US and the UK has not become as threatened or as dangerous as blogging in China. Many bloggers have been arrested in China and detained with no explanation or timetable of release. It is difficult for these bloggers to maintain anonymity, especially when their blogs are hosted in China. More and more Chinese bloggers are using a different route by hosting outside of the country, then using a VPN to connect to the Web and make their posts. In this way, tracing the IP address of the blogger will only lead back to the blogger. A blogger in China can easily make it appear as though they are blogging from the UK or the US.

A VPN is a necessity for new media

While we’re on the subject of blogs, let’s conclude with a few words about new media in general. The way we get information in this digital age, and even the way we get our entertainment, is becoming more Internet-based. In addition to the blogs you usually read, think about the entertainment or communications services you use on a daily basis. New media is great, but it is by no means global. Numerous countries still block Skype, and services like Netflix are unavailable beyond US borders. To preserve access to the blogs you read, or the media services you use when traveling, buy a VPN account from VPN-accounts.com is an absolute must.

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