Your boss at work might have restricted you from visiting certain sites like facebook, youtube, twitter and so on just thinking they are distractions. It might even be your school has a very fast WLAN but the network administrator makes it impossible to watch music videos on youtube or hang out with your peeps on facebook. Crazy, huh? Are you even aware some governments restrict their citizens from visiting certain sites? ( I’ve heard about China, Saudi Arabia and there’s word around that you can’t access some sites in Malaysia too). There are even some websites that block visitors from certain countries from accessing their contents but whatever the case may be, there’s a way out and after reading this post, you’ll definitely have access to all those blocked websites. I’m not sure there’s a site that can block me from accessing them even if they don’t allow visitors from Nigeria, and I’m not sure I’ll be bothered if my network operator blacklists some sites cuz I’ll still forge a way through anyway.
There are different ways to bypass censorship but they all do the same thing: your computer sends data to the proxy server, the proxy server sends your request to the site you want to visit, the site sends the reply which the proxy server gets and displays to you. You get to visit the site and it’s gonna look like you’re just visiting that proxy server, that’s the basic principle.
1. Using Anonymous Proxies
This is the easiest way to bypass any form of censorship and access blocked sites. You only need to get a working anonymous proxy with it’s port and input it into your browser. Getting a working anonymous proxy is the first thing and you can get lots of them from HideMyAss.com. and FreeProxyList.com has some good proxies too. They’ve been around for some time now and their proxy list is always updated so you won’t be left with just a bunch of dead proxy servers. You should select anyone that supports HTTPS so you will be able to access secure sites (https://). Just key in the IP and port into your browser and you’re good to go.
Changing Proxy Settings For Firefox
-Go to Tools, then Options.
-Click on Advanced tab.
-Select “Network” tab.
-Click “Settings” button in the “Connections” area.
-Select the Manual Proxy Configuration radio button.
-In the necessary proxy field(s), set HTTP Proxy (proxy IP) and proxy configuration Port.
-Check use this proxy server for all protocols.
Changing Proxy Settings For Google Chrome
-Click on the spanner toolbar icon
-Click on Under The Hood tab
-Click on Change Proxy Settings button
-If you are using LAN, click “LAN Settings” button. If you are using Dial-up or Virtual Private Network connection, select necessary connection and click “Settings” button.
-Make sure the “automatically detect proxy settings” and “use a proxy automatic configuration script” options are not checked.
-In the “Proxy Server” area, click the check box next to Use a proxy server for this connection.
-If necessary, enable “bypass proxy server for local addresses“.
-Click the “Advanced” button and set Proxy Server address (proxy IP), proxy server port.
For Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and other browsers, there’s a post I made sometimes in 2009 on how to change their proxy settings and I suggest you check it out.
2. Using Proxy Sites/Proxy Servers (PHP, CGI, GLYPE)
This is another way to access blocked sites and it even looks easier than the one above. You don’t need to tamper with your broser proxy settings or download any software, you just need to find a proxy site or build your own. Yes, you heard me right! You can either build your own PHP proxy server or create your personal CGI proxy server. In case you think that’s some geekie stuff that’s gonna be too hard, you can take the easy way out and find proxy sites to use. I have a page on this site with some CGI proxy servers you can use. You to can run a google search for free php proxy server or visit phpproxies.com or phpMyProxy for fast access to those blocked sites.
How to use them? Simple! Just enter your destination address in the url box and you’re there!
3. Using Anonymity Softwares
Anonymizers or anonymity software are programd that basically make you anonymous or in other words, change your IP address. This softwares are numerous but a great deal of them are for sale. There are some that are free though and I made some posts on them in the past. You can check the archive or view all my posts tagged ANONIMIZERS to see what I’m talking about.
There’s a host of them but the most crazy of them all is Tor. Tor changes your IP address almost every two minutes or so but If you need one with a stable IP address, I recommend Your Freedom, Gpass, Ultrasurf and Freegate.