When popular websites like Vimeo and Github start getting blocked somewhere, the huge user base of these services gets disturbed. The same is happening in India these days, all due to some not-very-clear terrorist mischief.

Recently Indian telecom authority (DoT) blocked a bunch of websites due to terrorist activities (debatable) on some websites.

There are total 32 websites that were blocked by DoT in the last week of December 2014, including some popular websites like Github, Vimeo, Pastebin, Dailymotion, Snipplr and more. Most of the sites that are blocked, are text (code) storing services eg. Github, Pastebin, Snipplr, Codepad etc.

Why are these services blocked?

Well the Indian government knows well why this block has been applied to some neat services like Github. The government officials via DoT have only said that the websites carry some anti-India content, as investigated by the Anti terrorism squad of India.

Accessing the services when you badly need it

A lot of Web developers and e-learners rely on the useful content provided by GitHub and Vimeo. As a Web developer, I myself use GitHub on a daily basis. I completely understand that government authorities are doing their job, but my job depends on something that they have blocked.

If you’re planning to use TOR browser or tweak the DNS, this is not going to help to unblock any of these blocked services.

Obviously the block will be removed on the reputed services in a few days, but in case you really need to use any one of these blocked services right now, I have a quick workaround for that.

  1. We are making use of a web proxy here to access blocked sites. Head over to Hide.me.
  2. Enter your URL there in the text box as shown in the below screenshot. I demonstrated it with a Github repo. Set your proxy location to any place except India.
    Web proxy hide.me
  3. Look below. I’ve been successfully browsing Github even when it is blocked!
    Accessing blocked Github with Web proxy

This way you would also be able to download repos as ZIP from Github. In case this proxy doesn’t work for you, give a try to VPN Deluxe or a similar service.

I wrote this article in order to help other fellow Web developers and the people who rely on learning Web development and creative stuff from the Internet.

If this guide helped you someway, please consider sharing it with friends. Enjoy :)