It is the policy in many schools, institutions and even workplaces to employ website blocking software to prevent people from accessing a certain list of websites. This could be done for many reasons and it is the social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and email sites like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail getting blocked. Another common site that gets blocked is Youtube.
Does your workplace or college block some of your favorite websites? We have seen various hacks in the past from setting up a tunnel session to your home computer to going to proxies for blocked site access. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can unblock blocked websites.
Web Based Proxy
Using a web based proxy is the most common used by everyone. And there are ton of web based proxies available for us to use. However, most people will find in due time that the proxy they regularly used is now blocked by the network administrator. Also, most of the web based proxies are heavily monetized and plastered with ads. Some strip out javascript, images, etc. You have to be diligent in finding and using a web based proxy service to get around blocked websites.
Now, you can just go to any of the proxy web sites to access those blocked websites.
They all essentially work the same way – unblock blocked websites. Most of these sites give you access to sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hotmsail, Gmail, etc by tricking the browser with another IP address.
So your network firewall thinks you are accessing an obscure site while you are actually going to the site you want that was blocked in the first place. One of the most popular web based free proxy service is Air Proxy. It works with both secure (https / ssl) sites as well as regular unsecured sites. It is always good to use a secure site when possible. This will let you avoid any password logging employed by evil proxies.
Types of Online Proxy
There are several types of online proxies available
- Proxies for certain websites
- Generic Proxies
- Proxies that can encrypt your connection with SSL
- Proxies that can kill javascript, HTML title, encoding, etc.
- Proxies that let you edit cookies
You can also use these sites if for some reasons, if you don’t want to know about, you would like your IP address be not traced.
Master Unblocker
A good example of a popular online proxy is the sweet Master Unblocker. This online proxy works by providing a daily unblocker like sweet unblocker, silver unblocker, sneaking in, unblocker pro, daily unblocker, winter unblocker and secure unblocker. You can use any one of these proxy site to access sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
Free SSL Proxy
This is the kind of online proxy sites that I like. When you an unsecured proxy site and try to login to sites like Youtube, Facebook, etc, you are sending your username and password in clear text for someone else to see if they know what they are doing. (see What is Firesheep?) An SSL proxy will encrypt your traffic so no one else can snoop on your connection through the proxy to sniff out your passwords.
Anonymizing Web HTTP Proxy
After looking under the hood of these sites, I found that they are all just using a Open Source Web HTTP Proxy called PHProxy. You can run this from any server, for instance your blog host. Your hosting server would act as a medium between you and the websites you are getting to. The ip address of your host will be recorded at the sites you visit. Of course the server running PHProxy should have access to the blocked sites.
Use your Home Computer to Unblock Blocked Sites
If you’d like you can in fact run a web server in your home computer and install PHProxy on there. You can use a solution like DynDNS which gives you a easy to remember name from one of their free domains which can be mapped to your home computer IP address.
You are probably thinking how would this work if I don’t have a static IP as would most of the Cable or DSL customers. You can use a utility to keep your home computer IP synced with DynDNS service.
Now, you can use your home computer to unblock these sites. This will best even the best proxy sites in terms offering a fast proxy for you and you are in total control of the situation. You can even grab a good proxy ip list to make sure you aren’t in that range and get blacklisted.
Should you unblock blocked websites?
A website is probably blocked by a workplace or university for a good reason and it might cost you to get around it. For example, porn sites or gambling sites. Stay away from them while at work. What you do elsewhere is nobody’s business.
But, we hear about some Corporate or University rules that block legitimate sites for unfathomable reasons only known to the webmaster or the policy maker. For such instances, here is an easy way to regain your power!
If you have stories about legitimate websites being blocked, let’s hear it.
Did you know someone else could view your MySpace Private Profile Pictures?
Still didn’t answer your question? Check out the following articles
- A Good Proxy to Get around Blocked Sites
- Access Blocked Websites By Email
- Disable Third Party Data Tracking with Disconnect
- How to Get Past Blocked Sites?
- What is FireSheep and How to Protect Yourself?
- BlackSheep Protects Against FireSheep
Google-powered Related Articles
- No related posts found
