We all endure Internet censorship in one of another way, in our respective countries. Like people in Iran or China are blocked from using YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, UK users cannot access The Pirate Bay, KAT or H33T. While authorities in every nation try to control and limit the web access, a Japanese University has taken initiative to play it other way. The Graduate School of University of Tsukuba, Japan is developing a new project where a new tool from researchers gives instant access to dozens of VPN services. Not only is the system simple to use, but it’s also completely free.

There are different reasons for blocking website access, some are blocked because they deem repulsive to society, some have controversial views about government, some block piracy, and others think that allowing access to web will divert people minds to Western thinking. Not only in Asian and MENA region, website blocking is increasing in western countries as well, such as UK and US, mostly mainly because certain domains are viewed as offensive to the music and movie industries.

Called VPN Gate Academic Experiment Project, the project aims at expanding the knowledge of Global Distributed Public VPN Relay Servers. The project works with contribution of global volunteers who gave University access to dozens of VPN servers located all over the world which people can access from pretty much any device running Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and more. Moreover, no sign up is required to use the service. Once connected the user’s IP address is hidden and switched for one issued by the VPN of their choice selected from dozens around the world.

With this anonymous VPN service, one can unblock any site in an instant by selecting a desired server. Once a server is selected and connected to the client, simply use your regular browser and other Internet applications as usual and traffic will be diverted through the VPN.

The service accepts several protocols, such as L2TP/IPsec, SSTP and the popular OpenVPN, but things get really streamlined for those who select the SSL-VPN option. This requires the easy installation of the Windows freeware client SoftEther VPN but it’s straightforward and only takes a couple of minutes. The best part is that SoftEther offer SSL-VPN tunneling via HTTPS to pass more easily through NATs and firewalls.

TorrentFreak also carried out some basic tests on the VPN service, and got some decent results.