Have you ever browsed over a website only to get a blocked notification? This phenomenon is pretty common, and many people face inconvenience due to this technical restriction. However, many people are unaware of the cause of this nuisance and, more so, how to overcome this hiccup.

While certain websites are restricted by interested parties intestinally for the general audience, there are also other factors that come into play. Moreover, accessing these websites requires using a reliable residential proxy network.

Therefore, this comprehensive guide is going to delve into the intricacies of restricted websites and how you can unlock these websites with ease.

Why Are Certain Websites Restricted?

Users from all across the world frequently experience difficulty accessing their preferred resources these days. This happens because:

• Some nations may not want residents to have access to resources from certain countries for political or commercial reasons. 
• Businesses may limit employee Internet use to improve productivity, while parental control programs may restrict access for specific age groups.

However, there are always methods to overcome any hurdle. One of the most common avenues is to utilize a clinical research organization that rotates your internet protocol or IP address, allowing you to unblock websites with ease.

Evaluating The Status Of Blocked Website

Before terming a website as a restricted website, you need to analyze the status of a blocked website using the following steps:

• Initially, use an uptime monitoring service to determine whether the website is down or up.
• If it is down, it is most likely due to technical reasons and should be back up and running in a few days.
• If the service does not identify downtime, it is most likely because the website administrator or your government/company has restricted access to it.
• Ask your friends, coworkers, and associates if they can’t access the websites, but individuals outside of your business can; it must be due to corporate control.
• If you have friends from other nations, ask them too if people in your nation are unable to access it while users from other countries can; it is most likely prohibited by your home or host country’s government.

Different Types Of Restrictions Applied On Websites

There are different types of restrictions that are applied on websites depending on the location, interest of the organization, nature of the website, or political concerns.

Geo-blocking

One of the most serious dangers to Internet freedom is the growing practice of barring users from specific nations. It is a method for limiting access to Internet material depending on a user’s geographic location.

Governments, businesses, and websites employ geolocation methods to determine a user’s location based on IP address, connection latency, and other factors.

Geoblocking is used by governments for political and economic goals, limiting access to various enterprises, media groups, social organizations, and so on that are subject to political and economic penalties. 

To comply with protectionist laws, governments may blacklist shops from specific nations and ban the sale of their items within those countries. Private enterprises and individuals may also use geo-blocking. They do this for a variety of reasons.

Institutional Restriction

Almost everyone has had content restricted by their workplace or school. But why are these obstacles in place, and how do they operate?

The argument is very straightforward: schools and workplaces have a strong interest in keeping pupils and employees productive. As a result, they impose severe restrictions on specific types of websites, such as social networks and online gaming.

Typically, your school or business network restricts websites based on their URL. That implies that anytime you type a URL into your browser, the network compares it to its blocklist. If the address is on the blocklist, access is restricted, and you are blocked.

Poor IP Address

Website owners monitor traffic data and take action anytime there are harmful actions from a certain IP address. For example, you can try to leave a large number of spam comments with a backlink to your website. There are automated systems that identify spam and block your IP address when the threshold is met.

The primary issue is that many ISPs share IP addresses with several users. As a result, someone who shares your IP address may be carrying out nefarious activities.

Ways To Bypass Restricted Websites

There are a few methods that you can use to access blocked websites, and the most common avenue is using a VPN or virtual private network.

VPN: VPN connects you to a server anywhere in the globe on a peer-to-peer basis, bypassing the central server. When you connect to a server outside of your own country, your IP address will be placed elsewhere. 

VPNs encrypt data transmission and enable users to create channels that a third party cannot decode. There are several inexpensive VPN services available online that allow you to connect to a server half a world away. VPN is one of the most secure and reliable ways to circumvent limitations.

Using A Proxy: Connecting to a proxy is another approach to get around restrictions. A proxy service hides the prohibited website from your ISP and prevents them from tracking your activity.

Access IP over URL: If you notice that a website is prohibited, try visiting it via its IP address because the blockers may have concealed the URL. It is possible to obtain the IP address by pinging it with a free PING program or Command Prompt. 

Run the application, enter the website’s URL, press Enter, paste the IP address into the browser’s address bar, and choose the desired site from the list.

Use DNS over HTTPS (DoH): DNS over HTTPS is an interface that performs remote Domain Name System resolution using the HTTPS protocol. You may also use this to attempt to unblock restricted websites.

Edit the DNS server assignment manually and change Ipv4 settings with your primary DNS server address. Fill alternate DNS server address. Then, edit the Ipv6 settings in the same format and save this configuration.

Conclusion
Restricted websites can be defined based on the institutional restrictions, nature of the website, and bad reputation of IP address due to shared IP address. Most of these restrictions have been placed by authorities to keep unwanted elements out of internet traffic. 

However, you can easily access these websites by using different approaches. One of the primary methods, to this date, remains the use of a VPN or proxies by clinical research organizations. Moreover, there are other methods, including DNS over HTTPS and IP over URL, that allow you to seamlessly browse restricted websites.