Dear Sir,

Since long, I've been trying to get a girlfriend or dating in the UAE
country, where I live, through the internet, but unfortunately our ISP
in this country, Etisalat, has blocked access to many famous websites
that provides such services like http://www.americansingles.com/.

I live with a very conservative family and find the easiest way for me
do such search is through the internetit.

Please, help.

Yours faithfully,

---

Clarification of Question by zm_am-ga on 28 Oct 2004 20:07 PDT

What I need is either an application which can be installed in a
computer and open blocked websites or organisation which can help
through emails instead of web.

Just get online and sign up for an American AOL account.  Then,
download the AOL software and see if it lets you access the sites. 
Just have AOL connect via your existing ISP using tcp/ip.  It is
possible that this will bypass the blocking that your ISP uses.

Dear zm_am_ga,
Hope the following websites will help you in searching a girlfriend for you.
Following are few dating websites

Date.com 
http://www.date.com/

Yahoo! Personals  
http://personals.yahoo.com/

DatingDirect 
http://www.datingdirect.com

eHarmony.com
http://www.eharmony.com/
 
Udate.com 
http://www.udate.com/
     
Lavalife (Traffic Rank for lavalife.com: 306)
http://www.lavalife.com/

FriendFinder
http://friendfinder.com/
  
DreamMates 
http://www.dreammates.com/

Match.com 
http://www.match.com/

AmericanSingles 
http://www.americansingles.com/

Source: Singles Online Dating
http://www.singles-online-dating.com/

Match 
Yahoo! Personals 
DREAMMATES.COM 
SOMEONELIKESYOU.COM  
CUPIDJUNCTION.COM 
DATE.COM  
Matchmaker Sites  
FRIENDFINDER.COM 
KISS.COM  
UDATE.COM 
LAVALIFE.COM

Hi curious,

Unfortunately, after checking with our only ISP here in the UAE
Etisalat, I realised that AOL service is not supported by it, but in a
chat with an online service representative of AOL he told me about AIM
service. I want to try it.

Hi richard,

Thank you for the list of sites, but as I mentioned above all of them
are blocked except http://www.eharmony.com and http://www.match.com
they appear with no single picture.

The problem here is that there is only one ISP which monopolises
internet market and restricts customers' freedom over the net.

I've tried AIM but it doesn't have Find Match feature. It's just a
normal messenger. I don't know what to do with this monopoly ISP.

I think both Richard and Curious don't understand is that the problem
is not finding those sites, but how to bypass a restrictive ISP - a
state monopoly - that censorises dating sites.

An idea for Zamam might be to seek Hallal dating sites, that might be
approved by the government.

Dear politicalguru,

What's Zamam?

There are some marriage sites which you can't post a friendship or
dating advertisement in, nay temporary marriage advertisement which is
halal in many Muslims beliefs.

The proxy server that this ISP uses is "proxy1.emirates.net.ae" with
port of "8080". So, one solution is to get another working proxy
server.