Five Ways to Bypass MCMC Web Censorship #BERSIH4

MCMC and the government of Malaysia has decided that by censoring and blocking websites related to BERSIH 4 rally is the right thing to do. Well, that's not righ. Information is free and we at freemahesa believe every information should be available to everyone and it is the individuals prerogative to decide what is wrong and what is right. So Najib and Co does not have to do the parenting. They more they censor, they more creative we become.

1. Simplest Solution: Use a VPN 

Connect to a virtual private network and all traffic coming from your computer will be redirected over that VPN. In other words, if you’re connected to a VPN located in Iceland, all your network traffic will be redirected to Iceland before it emerges. Replies will be send to the server in Iceland, which will forward them back to you. This all happens over an encrypted connection. All your ISP, network operator, or even your country’s government can see is that you’re making an encrypted VPN connection and sending data over the connection. If they want to block you, they’d have to block VPN connections.

Power Users: Use Private Internet Acccess

We’ve done a lot of research on VPN providers, and PrivateInternetAccess has the best combination of a huge network and an easy to use interface. They have 2700 servers in tons of different countries, their clients connect almost instantly, and best of all, you can pay with almost any type of account. They even accept gift cards as payment, so if you have a half-used Starbucks gift card, you can use that to sign up for a VPN.

They have apps for every platform including Windows, OS X, Android, and iPhone, and you can even hook up your home router to their VPN servers to put your entire home network behind a VPN. How’s that for flexibility and power?

Casual Users or Beginners: Use TunnelBear

We’ve also done a lot of testing to find a client suitable for beginners, and we’ve found that TunnelBear has easy, dead-simple setup – you just click the dial in the application; you don’t even need to configure the VPN in Windows. They have a free version and a paid upgrade that’s definitely worth the price.

VPNs are also commonly used for remotely connecting to work networks, so VPNs are generally not blocked. However, China has recently started interfering with VPNs. Free VPNs are available, but a solid, fast VPN will cost you money — either to rent from a VPN provider or to pay for hosting so you can set up your own VPN.

2. Tor

Tor allows you to browse anonymously. It does this by routing your web browsing over and encrypted network before it emerges at an endpoint, which will likely be in an uncensored, unfiltered location. You shouldn’t use Tor to access sensitive, unencrypted data, but Tor will let you access blocked websites on any connection.

Tor’s developers are fighting a long, unending battle with regimes that attempt to block it, such as Iran. Tor may work even if standard VPNs, proxies, and SSH tunnels won’t.

Note that Tor does have a big downside — it’s much, much slower than typical web browsing. It will allow you to access blocked websites, but it shouldn’t be used for all your day-to-day browsing unless you’re a dissident living in Iran or China.

3. DNS Server

This method is the least likely to work, but it’s worth covering here. Some Internet service providers have implemented filtering by changing their DNS servers to redirect requests for the blocked websites to another website. Some places that filter their Internet connections may use something like the web filtering solution offered by OpenDNS.

Assuming the filtering is just at the DNS level and requests to other DNS servers aren’t being blocked, you can get around the filtering by setting a custom DNS server on your device. This overrides and bypasses the default DNS server controlled by your Internet service provider or the organization running the network. Use something like Google Public DNS and you’ll know no DNS-level filtering is taking place.

4. Proxy

Blocked sites can also be accessed using a standard proxy. System-wide (or browser-wide) proxies generally function similarly to VPNs, but they’re not as reliable — for example, they only work with certain programs, not every program on your computer. If you want to pay for a service and send all your traffic over it, you’re better off with a VPN.

However, if you want to quickly access a blocked website, you can try using a web-based proxy. There are many available, including the widely known Hide My Ass. Plug a website’s address into the box on the website and you can access it via the proxy.

This won’t always work, as the proxy itself may be blocked. It’s also not the best experience, as the proxy itself will add advertisements to the page — they have to pay for their free service somehow. However, if you want to quickly access a single blocked site without installing anything or changing any system settings, this may work for you.

5. SSH Tunnel

SSH tunnels can work similarly to VPNs for securely tunneling your traffic. If you’re looking to pay for such a service, you’ll probably want to get a VPN. However, if you’re a geek, you may already have an SSH server you can access remotely.

If you do have an SSH server you can access, you can connect to it remotely and set up tunneling, redirecting all your web browsing traffic over the secure connection. This is helpful to encrypt your browsing traffic so it can’t be snooped on on public WI-Fi networks, and it will also bypass any filtering on the local network. You’ll have the same web browsing experience you would have if you were sitting at the SSH server’s location, although it will be a little slower.

You can create an SSH tunnel with PuTTY on Windows or with the SSH command on other platforms.

We strongly recommend you to try Tor and the DNS Server method first. Assuming the level MCMC, this two method are sufficient enough to bypass the censorship.

Do drop us an email or comment if you need any help.

Together Stronger. #BERSIH4

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Create Your Own Online Proxy Server for FREE

You can deploy a proxy server with google app engine in a few minutes, without have to worry about the technical knowledge. This will be helpful to access blocked sites at workplace and schools. Have Fun!

How to Create Your Own Proxy Server ?

Step 1 : Open appengine.google.com and login in with your google account.

Step 2 : Click the “Create an Application” button. If this is your first time then Google may ask to verify code via sms to your mobile phone number.

Step 3: Select an Application Identifier and it will become the sub-domain of  proxy server. Give a title (say My Proxy Server) to your app, set the Authentication Option “Open to all users”, create the application.

Step 4: Go to python.org, download the 2.7 Installer and install Python. If you are using Mac, Python 2.7 is already installed on your computer.

Step 5: Download the application files required to create a proxy server from here . Extract the zip file on your desktop. You may edit the “main.html” file , to customize the front end of your proxy server.

Step 6: Go to code.google.com, download the “Google App Engine SDK for Python” and install it. When the installation has finished, click “Run Launcher” button.

Step 7: Inside the Google App Engine Launcher, Select Edit >> Preferences from the desktop and set the correct values for the Python Path, App Engine SDK and the Text Editor (set this is as WordPad or write.exe and not notepad.exe).


Step 8:  Click File tab >> Add Existing Application under the Google App Launcher program and browse to the folder that contains the files that you extracted in Step 5. Once the project is added to App Engine, select the project and click Edit to replace “YOUR_APP_ID” with your App ID (Sub-Domain you created in Step 3). Save and close the file.

Step 9:  Hit Deploy, enter your Google account credentials and, within few seconds, your online proxy server will be deployed. The public URL (or web address) of your new proxy server will be your _app_id.appspot.com (replace _app_id with your App Engine Identifier).

(Note: The generated proxy server is basic one therefore it willl not be functional for the sites which require logins, like gmail.)

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Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) a sin or a service?

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is a SCAM!! This is what often we  hear from a layman. There will be always a "smart" person who cynically condemns a network marketing business. From their understanding the company earns by recruiting people into their business, so called exploitation of wealth from people below to people on top. But most of them who criticize have never done even a single networking business before or stopped it halfway without knowing the actual way of doing it. Some might have invested in a wrong company and claiming ALL direct selling companies are SCAM.

Dear skeptics, allow me to share a few facts about Network Marketing business to give more clarity rather than being dumb over utilitarianism.

1) MLM companies are not recruitment agencies. If you have seen a MLM business owner who keeps on recruiting every month then he is as dumb as a chicken. Because the direct commission from sponsoring a direct sales representative is just one-time payment. A real networker should emphasize on duplication rather than signing up his own direct representative. There should be proper delegation of knowledge and expertise of the product and marketing plan to different levels. Why? Because MLM is the most cost-efficient and fastest way to deliver products to the end-user. It doesn't require a lot of overhead costs to manage the product and it gives clearer explanation and details on NEW products in market.

2) MLM businesses are ONLY for those who wants to get benefited over endorsing or consigning a product to an end-user. If a person find the product or concept useful and would like to share it to his/her closed ones, the company pays for his endorsement. Let's take insurance as an example. Insurance is vital to civilians. But how many people realize and understand the importance of insurance. So an insurance agent is responsible to make his client understand the importance of insurance so that they'll take a policy in order to protect their loved ones. And what if the client feel that he should spread the importance of insurance to some of his friends and relatives. The client can be recruited as an agent and get benefited through commission and other benefits for endorsing insurance policy to the person he knows. Does the earlier insurance agent who recruited the client to become an agent get benefited whenever the latter sells a policy? Yes, he does. That does not sound like MLM to you people? It is generally accepted as legitimate  business. But if someone likes a product from a MLM company and intend to consign to people they know, the company pays them, known as SCAM? Please enlighten me over the logic.

3) Some may ask, "If the product is too GOOD and REVOLUTIONARY, why not just sell it in retail or market? it may eventually reach people if it is good right". There are 2 scenarios you guys must take note on this.

a) Let say you created a new COLA drink. It tastes better than the soft drink giants like PEPSI or COCA COLA. And you placed it in open market like supermarket. You really think you can compete with PEPSI and COCA COLA and supersede their market? Maybe yes, it is possible in 5 or 10 years but can your company sustain the loss for the first 5 years of your introductory period before it sees a solid profit? Or let's take Google Plus for instance. They came up with a social network with very profound features, yet they couldn't establish themselves. Why? Because FACEBOOK was too established and holding the market. This is the main reason why MLM or direct-selling is more effective when it comes to delivering products to the end-user in such cases. During introductory phase a business must be very cost-efficient and capture the market share as fast as possible to avoide getting left out. And MLM seems the most suitable modus operandi.

b) Most companies with Network Marketing plan has a good product and concept but lack of investors and fund for R&D. Which is why they don't seem to be that attractive compared to the existing similar product during their introductory phase due to lack of resources to develop their product. And it is not easy to get an investor for a business idea too. Through MLM plan, the company shares their revenue to those who invest so that they can get more partners and marketers among civilians and able to improve their product quality faster as well as provide income earning platform for all. This way, the product upgrade is faster than ever with less cost involved and become more developed good enough to compete with existing products. It is just another way of crowd-funding.

4) Some claim "MLM is a Pyramid scam scheme, where people on top gets all the benefits and people below gets nothing. It is an exploitation of down-line". Do you know that Network Marketing is the only model of business  where down-line can earn more than up-line. How? Network Marketing works in a way that both left and right side of the tree must be active in order to see passive income and higher income. So whoever has active left and right leg they will constantly earn no matter they are up-line or down-line. Which means if down-line has both sides of legs active and up-line don't, the down-line will earn more than the up-line. So this is purely on individual ownership, hard-work and talent on duplication. In fact the actual pyramid scheme is as below:

This is where down-lines will never earn more than up-line and the up-line enjoys all the great benefits squeezed from down-line's hard work.

While in Network Marketing the more hard work put, the more progressive the person become. And it is mutual that if you don't service your down-line you will never go far in MLM business. Daria M. Brezinski Ph.D, a practicing psychologist and former marketing director for a multi-level marketing magazine, echoes these sentiments.  “Many people don’t realize that multi-level marketing companies are successful because they help people satisfy a number of important human needs, including feeling significant, having connections, learning something new, and making a difference.  I have heard people in network marketing say again and again, ‘I’m doing this because I’m meeting amazing people … making so many connections … and I feel so good about myself.’”

In simple words, if you don't make your down-line earn you won't earn. So how could that be an exploitation of down-line? There is a mutual connection between both levels earning. While in employment, if you don't perform or demanding higher salary you can be replaced by someone more skillful with lower salary.

5) Some claim that Network will die off if someone don't duplicate in any of the lower level. Do you know that your tree is in your control? You can place anyone below anyone provided that they are in the same legs of yours. So whenever a partner in any level seem to be passive, an active partner can be placed below him to activate our network. So no issues there.

6) And the BEST one is market will be saturated and we will run out of people to continue the network. Seriously? People don't breed nowadays? Every 2 years, a group of teenagers are entering adult hood, don't tell me you running out of competent networkers throughout years. Then which means we should be facing shortage of workforce crisis in our country if that's your logic.


Of course there are scam companies cheating people's money in the name of MLM.
SO HOW DO YOU DETERMINE WHICH MLM BUSINESS GENUINE & RELIABLE?

1) Please check BNM unauthorised business list at here.

2) Check how big is the capital and does it require continuous capital injection monthly or yearly. Some business will require you to invest a small capital and request to pay more periodically.

3) If they are physical product based, check if it requires you to buy and pile up their product monthly so that your bonus points gets don't get flushed. As a real direct seller we suppose to be selling the product to the end-user instead of buying for ourselves or piling up stocks at home. You might end up not selling it till it's expiry date and keep it as showcase at home.



4) Are there too many competitions for the product? If yes you will have hard time selling it to people.

5) Is it in line with current trend. This is mainly referring to technology based companies.

6) Attend all the products and marketing plan events, so that you can compare reliably.

7) If they are tempting with pictures of luxury cars and stack of money, please beware.

Dr. Brezinski’s point is well taken and easy to see practiced by popular network marketing companies.  Many MLM and NM companies tout a three-to-five year plan to attain freedom and wealth, yet many of the people running company meetings have been in the business for five or ten years and still haven’t left their full-time job or landed on easy street.  “As it turns out,” Dr. Brezinski notes, “when other human needs are being met, the members and consultants don’t focus solely on the financial aspects.”

So people lose patience and give up claiming that this business is a failure model for them. SUCCESS TAKES TIME people!!!

Lorene Hochstetler, from Ohio, recommends keeping your current job while slowly making the transition into MLM.  She’s been able to replace her full-time income but explains, “It didn’t happen overnight, and I still work every day.  I am very disciplined with my business and wake up every day knowing what I have to do in order to succeed at this.  You have to treat it like a business and be willing to follow advice from others who have made it.”

To put in the nutshell, MLM is all about servicing not scamming. It's about duplication not recruitment. Do your homework, involve in at least one MLM business in your life before judging it.
If you really want to build a passive income then start NOW!!

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