Pakistan YouTube access restored

Access to video-sharing website YouTube has been restored in Pakistan, the company has announced.

A YouTube spokesman confirmed to Web User that access had been restored in Pakistan, and a statement issued by the company reads: "We are pleased to confirm that YouTube is again accessible in Pakistan."

Access was blocked on Sunday when the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told the country's 70 internet service providers that the site would be blocked until further notice.

The reason for the embargo has not been confirmed, but there has been speculation that a film made by far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders on the website may have been a factor.

The PTA's action prompted a worldwide blackout of the website that lasted around two hours on Sunday. This was later blamed on a Pakistani engineer who mistakenly re-routed all traffic to the site rather than simply preventing Pakistani surfers from accessing it.

American company AnchorFree, the makers of a free product called HotSpot Shield, told Web User that it had seen a 1,300 per cent increase in Pakistani surfers using its free software in an attempt to get around the ban.

HotSpot Shield works by creating a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that can essentially disguise the location of the surfer.

Visit Web User's YouTube channel.

www.youtube.co.uk
http://anchorfree.com/downloads/hotspot-shield

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