How do I unblock blocked websites on Android?

Which DNS is best for unblocking websites?

If you are on this page and you've used a browser that's configured to use one of the following DNS services, you've probably already unblocked lots of things and are now wondering if there are other DNS services out there.

The good news is, you're right. There are more than a handful of free DNS services you can use to unblock websites.

What's the big deal? I don't know. It's just kind of neat. Maybe it was like that before the internet and we got our fill of unblocked websites. But it's cool and I love it. I mean, I'm really weird, right? I spend all my time unblocking websites. It's cool and maybe that's what it takes to survive in the modern age. Maybe in a few years' time I'll be the guy who has to take a nap after work in order to get through life. It would be sort of sad, but it could also be funny.

I have lots of thoughts about it and there are tons of questions for which I don't have answers. The best I can do is to write this guide and you can decide if it's helpful to you. If you like this article, or find any of my advice useful, I'm happy. You can follow me on Twitter too.

It's good to unblock websites. This is not a debate about whether it's good to use proxies to unblock websites. No one should be using an illegal proxy to unblock websites because that's not a good thing to do. In general, proxies are useful tools that keep you from being traced by those who are trying to surveil you.

Sometimes when you need to access a website that you otherwise shouldn't be able to access, you need a proxy to hide behind. This is true of most people who need to access Netflix. It's also a legitimate use case, I don't think anyone is going to be mad at you for using a proxy to unblock Netflix.

That's not what this article is about though. It's not a political or philosophical discussion. I'm not trying to argue whether you should be able to unblock Netflix.

I can see why you might think that you can't use a proxy to unblock websites. People often ask how proxies work and you might think that they block websites. It doesn't work that way.

Can DNS unblock websites?

Many people have been asking me for more information on how DNS works and how to get around blocked websites with DNS, since I've been answering questions on this for a while now.

So here I'll outline the basics of what DNS is and how to set it up to unblock websites.

What is DNS? DNS (Domain Name System) is a network component that maps hostnames to IP addresses. Hostnames don't inherently know their corresponding IP addresses so every website needs to be pointed at an IP address for the web server to use to reach out to the internet. This part of setting up a website is called domain mapping. The domain names associated with the domains you're setting up and pointing your domain name record to must be registered somewhere on the internet, or you won't be able to do anything with them. I explain how to register your own domain names and point them to an IP address in my previous article: How To Register And Point Your Own Domain Names To An IP Address.

The internet is a highly complex system and there are several other components to it beyond DNS that are all necessary to make it run. There's DNS, ICANN (which oversees domain name registrars), Root Servers, BIND (and the BIND Project), the internet routing table, NAT, TCP/IP etc, but without these components, you wouldn't be able to go online at all. For those who need a quick crash course, some good sources are:

The reason DNS gets so much hype in the context of censorship is because of how the majority of online resources and tools are based on it. Everything from search engines, to blog hosting platforms, social media sites etc are generally built using DNS, and when they get blocked they can't be accessed because it can't be resolved.

I also recommend reading: Google Censorship by David Van Camp. How can I unblock websites with DNS? The DNS system has the concept of recursive and non-recursive servers. A recursive DNS server will resolve an IP address for a particular domain or sub-domain (also called a second-level domain) based on the first part of the domain (also called a primary domain).

How do I unblock blocked websites on Android?

Blocking and unblocking websites on Android is a common problem faced by millions of Android users.

There are plenty of articles written on this subject. Most of them are very vague and some are just plain bad. So I've decided to post this one. But please, check out my other posts first, or else you won't know the things I'm talking about here.

You have to understand that Android is an operating system, not a browser. If you think that web browsing is same as opening a file from your computer hard drive, you're wrong. They aren't the same. So, first of all, your Android is running an operating system. It's not a "browser" OS, it's an OS. There's no browser on it. There's no "file manager". What you see on your screen is what there is, a collection of application and its content.

It's not an article on how to download files on your android or unblock websites on Android. It's about an OS and there's no way to unblock the websites on Android. All those guides on how to download or how to access blocked websites on your android (which is the same) are all misleading. They all tell you to browse using a file manager application. That is not possible on Android. They also tell you to install third party browsers. In short, all these guides don't work on Android. I have tested every single one of them and almost all of them ended up with errors. They don't give any details about the errors they showed. The only thing you'll get out of it is that your browser doesn't work. Well, yes, it does work if it works like a browser, but what about downloading a file on your android? It doesn't work there too.

There's no way to get a browser working on android. If there was, it would be one of the applications in the play store and not a third party browser. Also, it would use your data plan.

So we've established that there's no way to browse websites on Android. But the question is, how do you block websites on android? And the answer is that you can't. Android doesn't have a blocking feature.

The reason is that it's a different operating system. I've been programming for over 8 years now. I am an expert on programming.