Chinese Authorities Unblock VKontakte Access

VKontakte social network becomes accessible in China again after 2016 ban was lifted.

Recall that access to the social network in China was blocked in winter 2016. The reason was that movies belonging to Chinese copyright holders were actively being shared on the social network. However, two years later, VKontakte removed all illegal content and now complies with the laws of countries where it operates.

Currently, if a user adds content that violates local legislation, that page or material will simply be blocked for the relevant country, while it remains accessible in other countries.

Today VKontakte uses a hybrid content moderation approach. Initially, moderators review complaints received through the "Report" button. After spending a few minutes reviewing, they decide to either dismiss or escalate to the next stage. This is where a decision is made to conduct a global search for illegal content across the social network. Once found, it will be blocked and using special algorithms, it becomes impossible to upload it to the site in the future. Moderators respond almost instantly to signals from state regulators who report illegal content.

Using VPN to Access Websites

When you need to access information you're interested in, but it's blocked in your country for some reason, you can use a VPN server. The thing is, your real IP address will be replaced with the IP address of a remote server. The destination website or service will see only this remote IP, so access will be available to you. And if you understand that no logs are kept—meaning no data about your internet activity is stored—you get truly secure internet browsing.

So if you're concerned about internet censorship, use a VPN and get the information you need. Against the backdrop of constant hacker attacks and data theft, using a VPN service is well justified. All data between your computer or smartphone and the VPN server will be completely encrypted. In essence, VPN was created to establish secure communication channels that block all your traffic from unauthorized access. This guarantees that personal or company data leaks are impossible. VPN completely routes your traffic through its secure channel, which cannot be hacked.