Reports surfaced last night that the Internet has been shut down in Egypt as protests mount against the government. On the Morning Media Menu today, mediabistro Startups co-editor Kenneth Musante talked about tools online writers have used to avoid Twitter and Facebook censorship in Egypt.
Musante recommended Tor, a proxy service that has helped writers around the world dodge censorship. He explained: “If you set up a Tor client on your computer it sends your Internet traffic bouncing all around the world to these different routers. When it comes out on the other end, you can’t tell where it came from. It is designed so that people living countries that block specific sites can access sites like Twitter because it looks like your traffic is coming from Canada or something.”
Mashable listed a number of other apps that helped Egyptian writers get the message out during the early stages of the crackdown. The complete list follows below.
Five Tools Egyptian Writers Used to Dodge Twitter and Facebook Censorship
1. Mobile apps like Blackberry for Twitter or UberTwitter
2. Twitter apps like TweetDeck and HootSuite
3. Virtual Private Networks
4. Proxy Sites
5. Hotspot Shield