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How India Censors the Web

iamkush.me

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Re: How India Censors the Web

#31

Post by justDankin »

sbmthakur wrote: post #30
justDankin wrote: post #16

I'm one of the authors of the paper in the post, we're trying to extend this work by crowdsourcing censorship measurements from different vantage points in India. We've compiled these tests into an android app, please consider running it if you live in India and would like to contribute to the research :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.censorwatc... It's completely anonymous, doesn't require any pe…

The sites/domains that the app checks while running the probe are listed anywhere?

We released a subset of the data along with the paper (~5K hostnames), can be accessed at https://github.com/kush789/How-India-Censors-The-Web-Data

The app uses a more updated list (roughly 10K hostnames)

Re: How India Censors the Web

#33

Post by cvrjk »

d3nj4l wrote: post #12
srean wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't give me nightmares now. There is enough totalitarianism going on in this country already.

Get a VPN. It's not a perfect solution, and I sure hope we don't expect everyone to have to use a VPN to be private, but it's good enough - for now.

This. I've given up trying to figure out new ways to get around all the censorship. Not to mention, the current govt. has proven that it's ready to use any excuse to take punitive action against any citizen it disagrees with. Seen enough of journalists getting jailed and raided, people sharing comics criticizing the govt. getting charged with sedition and in some cases getting beaten up by the local 'gundas'..

Re: How India Censors the Web

#34

Post by throwaway250 »

piyushpr134 wrote: post #18

India is going to dogs under current leadership

Talking specifically about censorship, all governments have been guilty of it. Many websites were blocked under Congress rule, the Congress government even banned books like Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Even the courts are no better and are wont to censor websites based on the judge's whim.

Re: How India Censors the Web

#35

Post by beigeoak »

ananth22by7 wrote: post #32
piyushpr134 wrote: post #18

India is going to dogs under current leadership

I know this is an “in” opinion to have among urban, middle class or liberal circles, but I disagree. Life for me has been just fine. I can’t speak for the majority, only for myself.

Do you purchase the fruits and vegetables in your household?

Re: How India Censors the Web

#37

Post by rishav_sharan »

d3nj4l wrote: post #12
srean wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't give me nightmares now. There is enough totalitarianism going on in this country already.

Get a VPN. It's not a perfect solution, and I sure hope we don't expect everyone to have to use a VPN to be private, but it's good enough - for now.

Waiting for Mozilla to come to India

Re: How India Censors the Web

#38

Post by 411111111111111 »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #37
d3nj4l wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a VPN. It's not a perfect solution, and I sure hope we don't expect everyone to have to use a VPN to be private, but it's good enough - for now.

Waiting for Mozilla to come to India

Why? You can just use mullvad directly with a wireguard or openvpn client. It's the same service mozilla packages for the us market....

Re: How India Censors the Web

#39

Post by dheerajvs »

justDankin wrote: post #16

I'm one of the authors of the paper in the post, we're trying to extend this work by crowdsourcing censorship measurements from different vantage points in India. We've compiled these tests into an android app, please consider running it if you live in India and would like to contribute to the research :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.censorwatc... It's completely anonymous, doesn't require any pe…

In the interest of openness, would it be possible to open-source the app and host it on F-Droid[1]?

[1]https://f-droid.org/

Re: How India Censors the Web

#40

Post by milankragujevic »

kranner wrote: post #9
hackpert wrote: post #3

I have always suspected that this "whimsical" attitude stems from technical inability on the ISP's end in India. Most ISPs seem to run off the shelf equipment and few people have an adequate understanding of networking beyond the very basics, which leads to such easy-to-circumvent censorship. What terrifies me is that they might just end up learning at some point in the near future.

Every couple of weeks one of my internet connections (here in India) slows down dramatically. I used to call and complain, and my ISP would say they would "reset my account" which always brought things back to normal. For months I tried to persuade them to find and fix the underlying problem. Now I just call and ask if they can reset my account, please.

In Eastern Europe I use 4G home internet when visiting my parents' village house.

Every week like clockwork, the quality will drastically decrease from the usual 100 Mbps, on Saturday to 40 Mbps (minimum for the package) and Sunday to 10 Mbps. This will remain forever on 10 Mbps, even on Monday at 4am.

The only fix was to call the support line on Sunday and ask for a "network reset". Since this is a home internet, it is bound to the cell tower and it is drastically deprioritized elsewhere. The reset deletes and re-adds the device to my tower and sets the tower as the SIM card's home cell.

This was annoying but bearable, I got good at quickly calling and getting it done.

Except starting two weeks ago they refuse to do it, saying they're "not allowed to" anymore. No amount of persuasion helped.

They will report a technical problem and the support people will close it as resolved with a braindead blah response "maybe your signal is bad" or "maybe the tower is busy with traffic". Very sad.

These days I just change the IMEI if the modem and that seems to fix it... For a while.

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