Your internet service provider (ISP) could be blocking some content. A study conducted by a Canadian university has found that some major Indian ISPs have deployed web-censorship and filtering technology widely used in China and some West Asian countries.

The findings, published on January 15, were the result of a search for censorship software and hardware on public networks like those operated by ISPs.

A research team at Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, found a software-hardware combo package called PacketShaper being used in many parts of the world, including India.

While the phrase “there’s no privacy online” holds true in many respects, it’s always worth remembering that there’s a great deal of internet freedoms we currently enjoy that could be put at risk by cack-handed, or downright malicious,  legislation. Indeed, we appear to be in the midst of a state and corporate-level scramble to update laws in order to cope with the rapidly evolving communication and consumption habits, making this risk higher than ever. 

So let’s take a brief look at five of the biggest threats to global internet freedoms, taking into account existing laws that are continuing to have ramifications and potential legislation that would be disastrous if implemented. You may think different of course. If there’s something you think we’ve left out let us know in the comment section below.

The UK government has signed up a World Economic Forum (WEF) cybercrime initiative, which aims at protecting the growth of global e-commerce. Through signing this WEF Principles on Cyber Resilience, the UK joins more than 70 companies and government bodies across 25 countries which commit themselves in securing digital networks from cyber-attacks. The idea put forward by the WEF is to promote awareness, understanding and action of cyber threats, in order to tackle global cyber risk challenges.

Foreign secretary William Hague said that public and private sector organisations should work together, so as to ensure that business can be conducted in a safe digital environment. "The internet has a critical role to play as an engine and facilitator of economic growth� said Hague.

Leading freemium VPN service provider proXPN has just announced a 100% increase in the available bandwidth at its popular New York VPN data center.

Demand has grown substantially in the past 3 months for secure VPN connections to New York City, primarily from proXPN's rapidly expanding base of Canadian VPN users. Canadian proXPN users typically prefer connecting to the New York City data center because of its close proximity to Canada as well as receiving a USA IP address once connected.

These days, schools are so strapped for cash, they cant afford the Internet bandwidth for students to do useful and fun thing on school computers. Some schools expect students to actually do work during IT lessons, and some IT departments just don't like Facebook. However, the days are over when they can lock down the system enough to stop determined students from using the Internet as they please. There is a way around this filters and there are some good strategies to make it affordable.

Unblock sites using VPN

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It essentially creates a tunnel over the Internet that only exists between your computer and the computer you’re trying to access. If that computer happens to be running a restricted website, for instance, the ISP - your school, in this case - cannot tell what you’re trying to access. This means that their firewall will not be able to prevent you from accessing anything you want.