India’s porn ban is ridiculously easy to get around (thank God)

Last week, the Indian government asked telcos to ban 827 porn websites, and judging by what users are reporting it seems they’re actually putting the ban into effect. However, Indians aren’t giving up and users are finding easy ways to circumvent the major porn block.

While some users are finding alternative links, others are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or proxy services like ‘hide.me’ to access these sites. There are even specific browsers like UC browser, where the banned sites are working. Interestingly, Pornhub launched its own VPN back in May— which is truly helpful in these trying times.

Meanwhile, TorrentFreak observed that many Indians are changing their DNS to Google’s or Cloudflare’s free service. It also noted that searches for VPN in India have gone up.

When Jio finally announce ban on all porn sites but you realize every site is working on UC browser pic.twitter.com/UwHpY4Un7L

— Satyendra Prasad1 ?? (@Sanskari_ladka1) October 24, 2018

Users are also getting help from companies affected by the ban. Right after the ban, one of the biggest adult content sites PornHub launched a new domain called pornhub.net. The site also said that watching porn privately is not illegal in India and its ready to work with the government so that users can enjoy the legal adult content. The company said that India is the third largest consumer of its content.

In July 2015, the Indian authorities issued a similar order to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ban 857 sites. But days later they reversed the ban saying that ISPs are free to unblock these sites.

Indians have traditionally relied on CDs, downloaded videos, and messages on chat applications like WhatsApp to consume porn. It’d be interesting to see if the ban can sustain for a long time. In the meantime, as an Indian citizen, I’m grateful for how easy it is to get around it.