Reliance Jio Allegedly Blocking Proxies and VPNs in India, Faces Backlash from Users

The Indian government has been vehemently standing against adult websites on the internet and has already banned 800-odd sites for the Indians. However, Indians cleverly found ways to access these websites via the methods of proxies and VPNs. On January 3, Indian Reddit users started a thread where they discussed that Reliance Jio which has over 250 million subscribers in the country is banning proxy and VPN sites which are used to bypass the geographical internet restrictions by routing the connection through a different country. This move by the Mukesh Ambani led telecom operator has paved way for some serious questions about net neutrality, and the principle that all internet service providers (ISPs) must not be partial in their operations regarding any data.

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VPNs and Proxies Inaccessible on Reliance Jio Network

When tried to access by the Reliance Jio users, a minimum of seven proxy sites were found to be blocked which included the likes of Hide.me, VPNbook, Hidester, Kproxy, Proxysite, Proxy.toolur, and Megaproxy. On the other hand, when the same sites were tried on other ISPs like Airtel, Vodafone, Spectranet and ACT they were working fine. This incident has led the users of Reliance Jio to believe that the company is blocking these websites without any government order whatsoever. The executive director of New Delhi-based digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), Apar Gupta said that there is a lack of transparency regarding website blocking and it is hard to understand why something might be restricted.