Lantern

Lantern uses proxy technology to help you access blocked sites. It automatically detects if a website is blocked or not; if it is blocked, Lantern finds a way around the block, either by using its own servers or by redirecting traffic through Lantern users who live in an uncensored part of the world. The bottom line is this: if you can’t access certain websites because they’re blocked in your region, Lantern will help you “unblock them”.

Lantern’s installer is quite lightweight, so downloading it shouldn’t take long. Once you have the installer, run it and a setup wizard will show up and guide you through the steps you need to take to get Lantern up and running on your PC.

Speaking about that, while Lantern is up and running, you will see its icon in the system tray (that’s in the lower right hand corner, where the clock is). When Lantern launches, your default web browser will launch as well and will take you to a “Welcome to Lantern” webpage, webpage that features tabs for several websites, including Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook.

From this Welcome page, you can access Lantern’s settings. There aren’t many settings to play with: choose if you want Lantern to automatically run at startup, choose if you want to proxy all traffic, choose if you want to report anonymous usage statistics.

Please note that Lantern is a Beta product (at the time of writing this). Latern, which became available to the public in 2013, is largely financed by the US State Department and it is offered to the public for the great price of free.

Gain access to blocked sites and cross virtual borders that stop you from freely surfing the web. That’s what you get by using Lantern.