The story repeats itself over and over: governments censoring access to certain websites, services that don't work because of our geographic location, filtered results, the open ends up closed. We've previously explored the resources of Freegate, an anti-censorship proxy, but today we're looking at XX-Net, which combines X-Tunnel and a proxy based on Google App Engine into a single package to browse without censorship easily.
In some regions of the globe, internet users are experiencing all sorts of restrictions. From blocked services to monitored connections, their online sessions are a festival of censorship and surveillance. Naturally, on the web we can find various projects and services that seek to puncture that censorship and restore connections, and one of the most interesting is XX-Net, which originates from China and aims to “jump” the Great Firewall, but can be used elsewhere.
Learn to Browse Without Censorship with XX-Net
The first step is to download its latest version from the GitHub profile, or through a trusted mirror like Majorgeeks. Once you've decompressed the file's contents (you'll need 7-Zip or something that can open .7z), run start.bat (not the script, but the batch file), and let it load. The XX-Net icon will appear in the system tray, and it should open a browser tab with its control panel.
There we need to do two things: create a free account, and go to the Help section where you can obtain the SOCKS5 proxy to configure in the browser. From here you can use the proxy in any browser or compatible application, but personally I suggest setting up XX-Net in Firefox. While Chromium flavors depend on the operating system to use a proxy (which can lead to conflicts with other programs), Firefox sets SOCKS5 parameters separately, and it works perfectly.
The rest is a matter of verifying the change in our IP address, and the megabyte consumption in the XX-Net dashboard. What's the fine print? XX-Net is free and open source, but its bandwidth is not. Free accounts have 500 megabytes to use in 90 days, and you can purchase 300 GB for USD 4.5, or pay $15 and get 1.2 TB with a twelve-month duration.
XX-Net on GitHub: Click here
XX-Net via Majorgeeks: Click here
