Job Discussion Forums

kanjizai · Joined: 29 Jun 2003 Posts: 69

I was wondering if philosophy/mysticism books, hip hop music, Itunes, facebook? There has been much made of the 'thought' police, but what is the truth in the ground?

johnslat · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 5:01 pm Post subject:

Dear kanjizai,

Philosophy and hip hop are OK. Lots of hip hop in the music stores (but not too much "philosophy" in the book stores - umm, about zero, really.)

Mysticism - well, depends. Probaly OK, as long as it's not "black magic" or
"Satanism."

iTunes is OK
"iTunes 7.7 adds Saudi Arabia iTunes Store"
http://www.saudimac.com/2008/07/10/itunes-77-adds-saudi-arabia-itunes-store/

Facebook - probably not - but there are supposedly "proxy sites' available"

www.proxy.pkspace.info Hi Saudi Arabia Peopels Enjoy Free Proxy Saudi Arabia:) hope u like it:D

www.proxy.pkspace.info You can use this site to unblock web filters, allowing you to view restricted sites.PkSpace.Info Proxy Site� allows you to browse sites that your school, work or library have blocked.PkSpace.Info � also maintains your anonymity, keeping you secure. Your IP address will be hidden, so you can safely view Google, Ultrabilisim, Myspace, Orkut and any other blocked sites. Be sure to bookmark us and to tell your friends!
October 14, 2009 at 1:51pm

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=155485662113&topic=10984

But I never tried any proxies when I was there:

"Most of the blocked or blacklisted sites in Saudi Arabia are about sex, religion, women, health, politics and pop culture. They even block access to websites that sell swimming or bathing suits. In China, websites that talk about sex, Tibet or Democracy are blocked.

Social sites that are often blocked include Google News, Typepad, ebay, Blogger blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Orkut, MySpace, Pandora, Bebo, Photobucket, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL AIM, Flickr, last.fm, etc.

There are always legitimate reasons to bypass the internet filters and unblock websites. The following tricks will show how to access all websites at school, college, offices or at home.

1: To access blocked website, type the IP number instead of the URL in the browser address bar. However, if your blocking software maps the IP address to the web server (reverse DNS lookup), the website will still remain blocked.

2: Use a URL redirection service like tinyurl.com or snipurl.com. These domain forwarding services sometimes work as the address in the the url box remain the redirect url and do not change to the banned site.

Access Google Talk Chat or GMail in Office

3: Use Google Mobile Search - Google display the normal HTML pages as if you are viewing them on a mobile phone. During the translation, Google removes the javascript content and CSS scripts and breaks a longer page into several smaller pages. Google Mobile

Use Mobile browsers as proxy to open restricted websites

4: Enter the URL in Google or Yahoo search and then visit the cached copy of the page. To retrieve the page more quickly from Google's cache, click "Cached Text Only" while the browser is loading the page from cache.

5: There are anonymizer websites who will fetch the blocked web page from their servers and display them to you. As far as the service provider is concerned, you are viewing the page on the Anonymizer website and not the blocked site.

6: You can access blocked or restricted websites by using Yahoo Babelfish or Google Translate language tools as a proxy server.

You just have to invoke the Google translate service with the same language pair like English to English. Assuming that Google is accessible in your school, you should be able to access any website with this method - Babelfish Proxy Sever

Unblock restricted websites that require login

7: Anonymous Surfing - Browse the internet via free proxy server. A proxy server (or proxies) is a normal computer that hides the identity of computers on its network from the Internet.

Which means that only the address of the proxy server is visible to the world and not of those computers that are using it to browse the Internet. Just visit any proxy server with your Web browser and enter a URL or the address of the blocked website."

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:RbxMMUDHSxgJ:labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-access-blocked-websites.html+proxy+for+facebook+in+saudi+arabia&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Regards,
John

Mia Xanthi · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 6:43 pm Post subject:

Facebook is absolutely available in KSA, and the students live on it. Every so often there is a rumor that it will be blocked, but so far it it lives on. MySpace was blocked but still quite easily available.

In fact, I cannot think of a single site that I REALLY wanted to see that I ever found blocked. And even if it was blocked (like negative info on the royal family), it was so easy to find your way around it.

Don't bring in anything with pictures that could be interpreted as representing Christianity, idolatry (including statues of the Buddha or Hindu gods), or Satanism/black magic. They are very unlikely to check anything that doesn't have any pictures. I do know people who brought in Bibles and spiritually-oriented CDs without ever being checked, but it is the luck of the draw sometimes.

sahara musafir · Joined: 21 Oct 2009 Posts: 22

If Facebook is available, what about flikr, wordpress and google news? Is it possible to download TV shows via utorrent?

Cleopatra · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 8:08 pm Post subject:

As Mia says, internet censorship isn't really an issue in KSA, certainly not nearly so much as an issue as is often believed. Unless you're into 'adult' sites or certain Arabic language poiltical sites, chances are you'll barely notice internet censorship at all.

As for bringing books into the country, there have been countless threads about this (I think it might be a good idea to have a sticky on customs issues, because they come up on the site about every month or so). In short, your bags are highly unlikely to be searched, but if they are, you should be OK with most English-language materials provided they don't have possibly 'offensive' photographs or pictures. Most customs officials don't read English, and can't honestly be bothered in any case.

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Banned sites on the internet include anything (in Arabic or English) connected with the

Ba'ath
Hells Angels
Freemasonry

and all the other demons perceived in the wider world by the Pious and the Godly.

h-train · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 9:33 pm Post subject:

I was scared of coming here thinking I was going back to bootcamp or something. It is nothing like that. My bags weren't searched, everyone was nice to me in the airport, etc. My carryon baggage was checked in Houston and subsequently lost. I figured it would come back empty as it had 2 ipods and some other valuables in it. Everything was there. The last time this happened in Seattle my bag came back looted.

Expect the unexpected, but don't be freaked out. Don't bring porno or brewer's yeast. Don't bring a bag full of swine.

007 · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 9:37 pm Post subject:

trapezius · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:06 am Post subject:

teflerlifer · Joined: 16 Mar 2010 Posts: 27

'Don't bring a bag of swine'

Reminds me, of coming back from Dubai with a bag full of pork sausages and bacon to Doha.

The first time I was fine and smuggled in a couple of months of blissful English Breakfast supplies.

This time I was not so lucky, however the customs officials were very nice about it, just said sorry you can't bring pork products in.

I had to make do with beef bacon - NOT the same !!!

johnslat · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 2:28 am Post subject:

Dear teflerlifer,

"I had to make do with beef bacon - NOT the same !!!"

Hmm, sounds like you have a legitimate beef to me. You don't bring home the (real) bacon in the Kingdom. Smile

Regards,
John

Never Ceased To Be Amazed · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:46 am Post subject:

Might I add to the OP's query..."anything approaching 'fun'"...

NCTBA

desultude · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 614

Mia Xanthi · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 6:13 pm Post subject:

Yes, people who live near Bahrain "bring home the bacon" a lot and rarely get caught. I met one young wife from Aramco who said that she and her family had been caught bringing it across the border and they were fined 500 riyals and the contraband was confiscated. They still continued to bring it across the border in the bottom of their cooler (or "cold box" to the British) on a regular basis even after having been caught.

It seems that around Christian holidays like Christmas, the mutaween are allowed to come to the border and do closer inspections for contraband. Thus, the month of December would be a bad time to try this.

freesoul · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:19 am Post subject:

Or maybe you wanted to say: What is NOT restricted in KSA?