Anyone have a working free proxy site they'd like to share as I cant seem to find one that gets past the "safety" filter here in Dubai.

If you do, please PM me, DO NOT POST IT ON HERE!!!!!!

Cheers in advance

done

I take it that the internet is fairly heavily censored then.. Fair enough, I can understand that and I was expecting this, but am wondering how far this goes? For example, I download movies through itunes rather than say have a sky subscription. I can see some types of websites would be blocked, but are emails for example screened?

there's a national Firewall that flags up and blocks sites that are considered to have prohibited content. However, some reasonable sites can also get caught up in this. A while back I couldn't access Flickr, for example.

When a site is banned, a handy and discreet Yellow Screen of Death appears, with a rather disturbing cartoon character from over here.



As far as I know, emails aren't screened. I've heard that Etisalat blocks Skype, but Du doesn't. Msn is fine. To be honest, I've rarely encountered blocked sites, but there's a good, quick way around that. PM me if you'd like the link.

Downloading torrents is fine. A lot of people get a UK-based VPN anyway in order to access iPlayer and so that bypasses the firewall too, obviously.

Thanks.. I use skype a lot, so that would be a pain to loose, but there are as you say workarounds for most things..

msn also has a very good video-calling feature, which I prefer to Skype.

Etisalat and Du have divided up Dubai in terms of telecoms provision - there's nothing like a good monopoly to ensure customer service - so you'll find that certain areas are covered by one and not the other... at least that was what I was told.

There was an interesting article about a young San Franciscan named Austin Heap, who invented the proxy that enabled the Iranian's to overcome site-blocking.

At the moment, you can only get the app by asking for it (he's a busy young man!),
but there are plans to release it for free download anywhere in the world where the govmt seeks to control the internet within the next week or so.

Watch this space:

http://www.haystacknetwork.com/