We have heard, “Where there is a will, there is a way” our entire lives. It has been an encouragement to not give up during adversity, and to explore ways to accomplish our passions and desires. But the same phrase can cause us to try to get around things that are intended to protect us. First Corinthians 10:23 and 24 in the Bible say, “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.” This basic principle from God’s Word says that, yeah, I am able to do this thing “a way,” but that doesn’t mean it’s good for me.
For years TechMin has desired to help families, churches, schools, and ministries filter the internet to protect individuals’ minds and hearts. We have provided some great solutions for protection in these areas. But, as the quote says, when there is a will to get around something, we will find a way to do it. NOW there is a way to get around good filters and settings on almost any home-filtering setup.
Let me introduce to you the king of all work-arounds for filtered networks. Betternet is a virtual private network that creates a tunnel through any settings you have established on your network to protect your family. VPNs (virtual private networks) are a great tool—they can protect your data for secure transfers and help you remote into local networks to work in the “office.” But these VPNs can also block out any settings on the network you are connected to. As I mentioned before, a good way to describe this is a tunnel. The tunnel takes you through a blocked area with your own set of rules and connects you openly to the other side. Typically this is a costly feature, but it has been made available to a majority of people through the service of Betternet. You can read more about this service on the Betternet website, but I don’t think you need to. Their desire is to “help you access blocked websites, and bypass internet censorship and firewalls.” In most cases this is not necessary, and it is definitely not necessary for our kids!
I currently use a VPN, but for the opposite reason! I am using a service called PageClean which installs a VPN on my phone that is connected to their servers and filters it with OpenDNS internet filtering. This is one of the FIRST reliable filtering service I have found for the iPhone user that can’t be turned off or bypassed. So the VPN is not the problem—it’s what’s on the other side of the tunnel that is the issue. If you (or you kids) are using Betternet, then you are trying to get around guidelines on a network that has restricted some type of access. Guidelines are put in place to keep you safe. Let’s help each other, and keep each other accountable, to stay within the guidelines.
