Get past government Internet blocks

Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, recommended using a program called Tor, an open network software program that lets users surf the web anonymously. Epstein suggested putting the program on a flash drive or SD card rather than on hardware.

"That way, even if your computer is inspected, there will be no sign of Tor on it," he told CNBC.

Once in the program, double-click on "Start Tor Browser" to open a special version of Firefox that gives secure access to any website. Tor works by relaying users' request to visit a site through multiple computers around the world. To speed up that process, click on the tools tab in the upper-left corner of the browser and "change your identity" to reroute and thus get faster access.

"No matter what country you are in, if you want to preserve your privacy online, you should probably never go directly to Google.com through a conventional browser," he said. A proxy from Google known as http://startpage.com is, along with Tor, "for almost anyone, anywhere, the safest ways to access the Internet at the moment."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Get past government Internet blocks