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While Egypt’s New Law Threatens Jail for Visiting Censored Sites, Egyptians Turn to VPNs

Published : Thursday, August 23, 2018, 9:18 am
ACROFAN=Jae-Yong Ryu | jaeyong.ryu@acrofan.com | SNS
Egypt has passed a law that warns people who browse censored websites can be jailed for at least one year. Those who share content from blocked sites can receive a minimum prison sentence of two years.

Since Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president, was overthrown in a military coup, the government started crackdowns on the media. For example, Egypt has banned The Huffington Post, Human Right Watch, Qatar’s Al Jazeera, and other websites critical of the government.

“People want to access the information they were used to reading, they want to know unbiased opinions about what is happening in their country – so they turn to VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that allow to bypass censorship and to browse Internet freely,” said Marty P. Kamden, CMO of NordVPN. “We have seen an increase in the number of our Egyptian users since the law had been passed.

“Even though Egypt attempts to block VPNs, NordVPN is still functioning, and we will do our best to make sure free Internet is available to Egyptians.”

Social media has also been under attack – vocal influencers with anti-government statements are being rounded up. A social media account with more than 5,000 followers is deemed a media organization and is supervised by a state-appointed media supervisory council.

“VPNs play a very important role if a dissident doesn’t want to reveal their identity and IP address,” said Marty P. Kamden. “They encrypt information that the user shares into a safe tunnel and hide not only the IP address, but the website one visits as well.”

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