Internet Censorship - Thailand Proxy Internet

If you want to see a confusing Internet Censorship regime then Thailand definitely fits the bill - if I ever went to Thailand, Identity Cloaker and it's high speed proxy network would be extremely useful!

The Internet Censorship in Thailand

There are actually three main layers who block websites in Thailand although it's all so confusing that there are probably more.

Royal Thai Police
MICT (Ministry of Information and Communication Technology)
Communications Authority of Thailand

Basically there are 9 different categories which web pages are divided into -

categories 1-3 are ok,
Categories 4 and 5 get blocked - but nobody is quite sure why!
category 6 - Pornography which is illegal in Thailand (quite surprising really!)
Category 7 - Anonymous Proxy servers (which Thai people use to bypass censors)
category 8 - Policitical content which is deemed unsuitable
Category 9 - anything to do with Thai Royal Family.

This rather shambolic method is made even worse by various methods of blocking the sites although the main one was a black list sent out to the ISP in Thailand.
also there seems to be some technical problems as it appears an attempt to block a few videos on YouTube because of political content has actually blocked all of Youtube.

Whether or not this is on purpose I'm not sure but one things for sure Governments around the world are not overly fond of a website where anyone can speak their mind or make a video to criticise anything - You Tube is also banned in Turkey at time of writing I believe.

If you want to see the current list of blocked sites in Thailand - and for more information go to here Thailand Internet Censorship

So if you're off to work or holiday in Thailand and you use the internet a small investment in Identity Cloaker could be worth your while for a working Thailand proxy route out of the country!