Despite everything we've debated and explained on the matter, some governments around the world still insist on limiting or blocking access to various websites and services on the Web. If your travels take you to one of those countries, or you're convinced your connectivity provider censors specific portals, you might want to download a copy of the Freegate application and carry it on a USB drive.
You've heard this story before. China blocking search engines and social networks. Egypt and Syria disappearing from the Web. Court orders blocking access to BitTorrent indexes. The message is clear: there are governments, agencies, and institutions convinced that net neutrality must go. There are things that cannot be seen or heard. Talking about some topics is forbidden. Any attempt to question or challenge the status quo must be stopped.
And internet users always respond the same way: Disobedience mixed with creativity. Proxies, VPNs, the Tor network, encrypted connections, sneakernet. One move leads to the next, and the dance continues. For example, we all know about the censorship in web access from China. Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Netflix, Twitter, Bing, Reddit, Instagram, WhatsApp, BBC, Dropbox, Discord, Archive.org, HBO, all the sites for downloading a VPN... the list goes on. In October 2019 it was estimated that more than 10,000 portals and services don't pass the Chinese filter, and that's when alternatives like Freegate come in.
Freegate: Anti-Censorship Proxy
Freegate is an anti-censorship proxy developed by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) that automatically redirects user traffic to a network of servers (Dynaweb) that depend on the Hurricane Electric provider in the United States, combining P2P technology and encryption algorithms. Available information suggests DIT receives funding from many non-profit institutions, and the US government.
Using Freegate is as simple as double-clicking on its executable. Configuration parameters are reduced to its initial behavior (for example, if you want Freegate to only work on specific sites, or process all of them), and the installation of a packet filter, but afterwards we find more advanced values like tunnel selection, changing the proxy port, and starting it with your computer.
Freegate has some integration with Internet Explorer, and is considered the "default browser" for obvious reasons. All browsers that use the same proxy configuration as IE will work directly with Freegate without modifying anything (Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium variants), while Firefox requires an additional extension called GProxy Plus.
Beyond some occasional loss of speed during browsing, I can say Freegate works very well, even on the latest Windows 10 editions (here we use 1909). Still, it's necessary to highlight that some antiviruses may misinterpret Freegate as malware. In fact, several pro-government Syrian elements distributed infected copies of Freegate in 2013 to identify opponents. Although Freegate's priority is focused on those regions censored by local governments, nothing stops you from downloading a copy for a test or two.
Official site and download: Click here
