Ragnarok the Blocktopus's ICTentacles

[Chi Man]

After reading the interesting page on banned websites yesterday here on 2Bangkok.com, I visited a few anonymous surfing websites on the net to see if they could get around the censors in Thailand. They did just fine, allowing me to pull up a banned gambling website, www.betfair.com.

This morning, I tried to pull up a few of the anonymous surfing sites that I used yesterday, and guess what? The good ol' BANNED screen came up for most of them (not all that I used but the majority). Those sites I used and now banned include the following: anonymouse.com, proxify.com, and proxy4free.com. I also used anonymizer.com, but it escaped somehow.

Big brother is watching you.

Chi Man

[jpatokal]

This one won't be banned anytime soon:

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

[Chi Man]

Yes, authorities wouldn't likely ban Google's web accelerator. However, look at this post that Google put on the accelerator link:

Thank you for your
interest in Google Web Accelerator.
We have currently reached our
maximum capacity of users and
are actively working to increase
the number of users we can support.

[Chi Man]

Weird thing---this morning, a day after most of the anonymous sites came up banned, they're accessible once more. Strange. I tried a dozen or so anonymous surfing sites, but the banned ones had one thing in common: no encrypted URL listing.

[GWR]

The TNA link on this frontpage item no longer works.

New New visa regulations for foreign website owners - TNA, April 1, 2006
New regulations in effect from March 31 require foreigners applying for B, M, or O-type visas to disclose if they are owners of a website. If the website is commercial, they must possess a Thai business registration in the form of a limited partnership. If the visa-holder intends to post material to a website whether for pay or voluntarily--including Internet "forums"--the material must first be reviewed by the Ministry of Culture. Visitors with tourist visas are exempt from the new regulations.
The Ministry denies that the new regulations will be used to censor political speech. Instead, the Ministry is mainly focusing on material that might be of detriment to Thai tourism or the country's image in general.
The Ministry rejected plans to require foreigners who use the Internet to install a "Cyber Cop" program to ensure they abide by the new regulations since this would be seen as too restrictive and not in line with requirements for foreign guests in other countries.
"It is a privilege to hold a Thai visa," said Khunying Suchada Wattanasiritham, Director of Internet Hygiene at the Ministry of Culture. "We expect our guests to say good things about our country when they are online and I am sure they will want to..."

This seems to be the Khunying in question. Presumably 'Jada' is a short form of Suchada. Seen here as a part of some peace-building soiree. President of the Siam Commercial Bank, Bankers to the Hermetically-Sealed :-


http://peace-foundation.net.7host.co...artner/100.jpg

[jpatokal]

And a happy April Fool's to you too

I quite liked the Erawan mobile phone shrine sponsored by AIS though

[Chi Man]

Glad to see you have discovered Torpark, the USB device-friendly version of Tor's anonymizing software. Tor allows you to get around Thailand's stupid government censorship quite easily. They've recently blocked Tor's home website (http://tor.eff.org/), though, and they're likely to discover Torpark soon and block it too. Apart from P2P file sharing networks, there is only one place to get Torpark as far as I know. There is, however, another site where you can download the latest and greatest Tor version: http://www.vidalia-project.net/

Of course, once you have any version of Tor running on your system, you can use it to download future releases.

May I suggest that those running P2P sharing services like Gnutella keep a copy of the latest Tor release in their searchable download folder so others can get a copy if needed.

Feel the force of freedom....
Chi Man

[Dionysus]

Could you please enlighten me on how to use it? I've already downloaded it but still cannot get around the block......

[Dionysus]

Yes I am using BB and still not working....

[waerth]

I also have torpark. It slows things a bit down, but it works. So now anytime I bump into a site on my normal firefox that has the censorship on it I copy and paste the url. Close firefox open Torpark et voila

W

[GWR]

Does the built-in Firefox browser actually open? I suspect it's some kind of proxy server problem and I don't know much about such things, but I did notice that the Torpark FAQ said it could be a problem. So a visit to the download site is probably your best bet.

[Chi Man]

First, I'm not sure if you mean how to use Tor or how to use Torpark. They're different. I'll take Torpark first.

To run Torpark, just click on the Torpark application. Everything is pre-configured to run properly. Firefox will come up by itself when the whole application loads, which may take a few minutes depending on your computer. It can be so slow loading that it may seem that it won't work. Just be patient. Once Firefox comes up, you can surf as usual.

Running Tor (as opposed to Torpark) is a little more complex but not really complicated. If you have the latest Vidalia/Tor/Privoxy combo package, you just run Privoxy and Vidalia. Tor may or may not start automatically when you run Vidalia. In your system tray (the little icons on the bottom right of your computer next to the clock), if the onion is yellow, Tor isn't running. If it's green, Tor is running. To start Tor, right-click on the Vidalia onion in the system tray and select "Start" at the top of the menu. The onion icon should then turn green once Tor starts.

Now that you've got Tor running, you need to get Firefox to use it. There are a couple of ways to do this using various Firefox extensions (Torbutton is one, and FoxyProxy is another). I'll tell you how to set Firefox manually to use Tor. Before Firefox can use Tor, you need to change the connection settings. Go to Tools/Options/General Tab/Connection Settings. Select "Manual Proxy Configuration." In the large fields, type in "localhost" (no quotes) for HTTP, SSL, FTP, Gopher, and SOCKS Host. Then type in 8118 for the port for each of those except for SOCKS Host. For SOCKS Host, type in 9050. Select the Socks V5 radio button. Then for the "No Proxy for" field, type in "localhost, 127.0.0.1" (no quotes). Click OK and you're done.

Now Firefox will work with Tor. Try going to this URL to test whether you're using Tor or not: http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ipaddr.pl?tor=1 To stop using Tor, just go back to Connection Settings and select "Direct Connection to the Internet."

Hope this helps.

Chi Man

[Chi Man]

The friendly folks over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation just released a new version of Tor. Better, faster, and stealthier, this Tor (version 1.1.20) is a must-have to stick it to the Thai Cyber "got a f**ing stick up their a**es" Cops. Get it from http://tor.eff.org/ if you can, or do a search on the various file-sharing services.

[Chi Man]

Feeling sorry for those stuck behind the aluminum foil (hardly an iron curtain) of Thai censorship, I thought I'd list some alternative places to get Tor. The Tor sites run by EFF ( http://tor.eff.org/ and http://tor.eff.org/dist/ ) are blocked in Thailand (or were the last time I checked). If you haven't been able to get Tor, there's still hope. Try the links below.

If you download using BitTorrent, try this link:
http://opensource.depthstrike.com/?category=tor

Otherwise, here are some mirror sites for both the Tor website and the various distributions (versions) of Tor. The latest and greatest version is 0.1.1.20. Be sure to get the Tor/Vidalia/Privoxy bundle, not just the Tor stand-alone program.

http://tor.cypherpunks.at/
http://tor.cypherpunks.at/dist/
http://tor.depthstrike.com/
http://tor.depthstrike.com/dist/
http://download.berapla.de/mirrors/tor/
http://rem.spline.de/tor/
http://mirror.onionland.org/
http://mirror.onionland.org/dist/
http://tor.plentyfact.net/
http://tor.plentyfact.net/dist/
http://tor.plentyfact.net/dist/
http://ftp.bit.nl/mirror/tor/
ftp://ftp.bit.nl/mirror/tor/
http://ftp.se.linux.org/crypto/tor/
ftp://ftp.se.linux.org/pub/crypto/tor/
http://tor.meulie.net/
ftp://libertarianactivism.com/tor.eff.org/dist/
ftp://ftp.cs.stevens.edu/pub/tor/
http://www.ghirai.com/tor/
http://www.theonionrouter.com/

Feeling the flow of freedom...

Chi Man

[FarangBha]

Hey guys, useful thread.

I'm about to hook up to broadband in a new condo, but it seems my options are limited to Buddy Broadband or TOT.

Which is the better option, considering I need to use skype, access some banned sites, download vids, streaming vids/radio, and some bit-torrent use.

I've heard bit torrent is blocked by some providers, if so is there a way around it (I intend to spend some time soon looking into the links above).

Chhers.