A VPN is usually used to protect your privacy. But in many situations, a VPN is necessary to circumvent censorship or website blocks. When we think of censorship or blocked websites, we often think of China or Iran, which filter and block thousands of IP addresses, websites, and specific pages or URLs within websites.

But most other countries also engage in disrupting or blocking websites. For example, the United Kingdom has blocked Wikipedia, WordPress.com, and Archive.org. There is a growing and updated list here that lists website blocks in the UK. It’s important to monitor this list occasionally to be informed of new and important updates. True, many of the sites that get blocked are torrent sites that infringe on copyrights, but many others are blocked for more ulterior or business motives.

“Privacy on the Internet is something we need to keep demanding our governments and companies to bake into all the protocols and products we use,” says Danny Levinson, who develops the great Kovurt VPN product with his team in Asia. “We are all using our Web browsers and now more and more are relying on mobile phones, so we may see more privacy issues raised across a range of devices. The issues are everywhere and not just in the countries that are famous for filtering and blocking sites!”