Bypassing Your Local Monopoly

Say you live in some smallish, country, oh say, in Central America (just for grins), and you have to rely on the local landline telecommunications provider.

Let's say you want to use Skype (http://www.skype.com) or some other software that may or may not prevent some monopoly or other from sucking more of your hard-earned cash than you want to give them.

And, again, just for grins, let's say that this monopoly (or near monopoly) happens to routinely block whatever software you would like to use.

What can you do? That is, what can you do without really going out of your way financially to bypass their controls? Hmmm. That's a problem, isn't it? Or, is it?

You just might want to try something like Hotspot Shield (http://hotspotshield.com/). A free program from AnchorFree (http://www.anchorfree.com/), it protects your entire surfing session, ensuring an anonymous and censor-free Internet experience. That is, until the monopoly figures out how to block Hotspot Shield.

Download it from CNET at (http://download.cnet.com/Hotspot-Shield/3000-2092_4-10594721.html?tag=mncol)

The connection itself is somewhat strange to deal with if you've never used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) before. Some reviewers haven't given Hotspot Shield a high rating because of this. It is ad supported, so you'll probably have to live with some sort of banner ads each time. But, if you have no other options, as a last resort, it might be worth trying.

If you use Skype, a recommendation is to shut it down after each use. My friend, who installed Skype and Hotspot Shield, was able to use both with no issues. He reported that he didn't get a huge banner ad and attributed it to his using an ad blocker. Additionally, he said that Pandora radio (See the righthand column), which he had problems with before, worked fine through Hotspot Shield. You Tube (http://www.youtube.com)also improved, he said.

Power to the little guy!