Dodging The Great Firewall of India

ByGareth Johnson
Great Firewall of India

While nowhere near as pervasive as in North Korea, China, or Russia there are a hole heap of websites and apps that are aggressively banned in India.

This ironically despite the fact India promotes itself as a tech hub. The good news though is that it is fairly easy too circumvent the Great Firewall of India – particularly when it comes to the main apps.

What apps are banned in India?

There are now over 300 banned apps in India. Most of these are Chinese and in reality due to political reasons. Some though are for things like gambling. These have been the trends;

  • 29 June 2020 – all 59 apps
  • 27 July 2020 – all 47 clone apps
  • 2 September 2020 – all 118 apps
  • 24 November 2020 – all 43 apps
  • 14 February 2022 – all 54 apps
  • 2023 onwards – messaging, betting, and loan app bans

The main ones on this list though, that you might actually use are TikTok, WeChat, WeiBo and the whole of the Baidu family. The good news though is that unlike Russia for example, things are lax.

Click to read about being a Nomad in Pyongyang.

Great Firewall of India

How to circumvent the great firewall of India and access TikTok.

TikTok are fairly strict about implementing the Indian ban on their service and if they find out your in India you will be automatically logged out. Therefore you should follow these tips.

1) Turn off your location on TikTok. If you leave your location on they will now where you are regardless of eSim, or VPN.

    2) Use a VPN regardless. Use a good reliable VPN service and have it go on aromatically when your device goes on. This is an area where a lot of people screw up. Your esim might not know you are in India, but Wifi certainly does. Having VPN and e-sim also gives double protection.

    3) Do not add location to your posts. TikTok does not care about your posting about India, just so long as you do not post from in India. Therefore don’t add your location in India or you will get caught.

    And that is basically how you circumvent the Great Firewall of India. Something unsurprisingly not all that hard to do. And while this is for accessing TikTok, you can assume that most are basically the same.  It honestly fascinates me that with all the issues India has they instead focus on TikTok and vapes as their big issues…..

    I will cover Nomading in India later, but well lets just say it is not without its problems.

    Click to see my India Tours with YPT.