Proxy sites?

[Morrigoon]

In all those articles about kids on myspace and such, I remember reading that schools have a heck of a time keeping the kids off myspace, because they'll set up proxy sites through which they go wherever they want.

Seeing as I and the only other MCer at my company haven't been able to get on MC all morning, yet people at other companies can... I'm starting to think I have a new computer skill to learn.

What do you think? Do you know how? Teach me?

T'would make a great addition to my homepage ;)

[BarTopDancer]

There is a reason you can't access sites from work. It is highly unadvisiable to attempt to circumvent your IT rules. Some comapnies will go as far as termination for circumventing the company filters.

You can access LoT but not MC. Probably the topics and verbage used.

Signed,

Your resident IT Goddess.

[Morrigoon]

Fair enough.

Let's hope it's not a blocked-at-work thing though. Otherwise LoT will be next (because let's face it, there isn't another site out there worthy of my daily attention like LoT and MC, so w/out one, I'll be spending more time on the other... LoTs more)

[BarTopDancer]

I think it's the language and subject matter that is hitting the filters.

Do you get any sort of error message when trying to access MC? Or a web filter saying you aren't allowed to access this site due to....?

[Moonliner]

Depending on the policy, you can sometimes legally get around it by remoting into your own home PC. What you do once you are on your home PC is your business. It's not going through their servers.

Ask your IT staff if remote access into your home PC (for getting files you worked on at home ;) ) is acceptable or not.

[Morrigoon]

I get a DNS error and it offers to see if the domain name is available

[Moonliner]

I get a DNS error and it offers to see if the domain name is available

Try putting in: 69.16.243.148 for an address.

[Morrigoon]

This is what I'm getting:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/morrigoon/dnserror.jpg

[Morrigoon]

Try putting in: 69.16.243.148 for an address.


:snap::):snap:

[Moonliner]

:snap::):snap:


Damn you have some lazy IT folks. :)

[DisneyFan25863]

Our Bess filter at school blocks pretty much every site out there (including Wikipedia!). I have a CGI proxy script on my webserver that I use to circumvent it. Of course, I have the blessing of our IT Admin, who knows me and knows that I only use it for stuff in ASB and TV Production (where we use stuff like Google Image Search and GMail all the time).

If its not blocked, you can try using a site language converter (such as Google). Just tell it to convert to English, and it will display the entire site for you. It will look like a request to google.com to your servers.

[Morrigoon]

hahah!

[BarTopDancer]

I still must say it is unwise to circumvent your internet filters. While not much will probably be done about it (since your IT dept has better things to worry about and internet useage should be between employee and boss), it can be used against an employee if there were any issues regarding employment.

I don't mean to be a downer, just to be aware that there is a reason for the filters and a reason your company has an IT policy (that you probably signed upon being hired).

[Kevy Baby]

Eh... I say screw the IT folks. They're just a bunch of power hungry geeks trying to exert power to make up for the years of taunting in school.

:D :evil: :p

[BarTopDancer]

Eh... I say screw the IT folks. They're just a bunch of power hungry geeks trying to exert power to make up for the years of taunting in school.

:D :evil: :p

You're just jealous. :p

C - This is what I tell the people in my office: I don't care what you do online, as long as it is legal. I have way to much to do to babysit your internet useage. That is between you and your boss.

Just don't download software you shouldn't. Like Limewire and then get mad at me when I remove all unauthorized software and delete files in attempt to save the files you refuse to store on the public drive.

[Morrigoon]

Are you kidding, it was my IT department that told me about using azureus to bit torrent.

heh.

Not on the office computer, of course

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, thanks for the warnings, BTD. Now someone just tell me how to do it already. I don't care if it's grounds for termination, since I am two steps from quitting.

I was going to go the route Moonliner outlined, but being able to access LoT from work is not worth leaving my home computer on all day (it has power management issues, but I wouldn't do it anyway).

So, all warnings having been given, what are these proxy sites, how do they work, how do I get it going? I'm a big boy (well, you know what I mean) and I'll takes my chances.

[Morrigoon]

LOL, I see I'm not the only one, heheh.

iSm: you could always try the option suggested in post #11. Lemme know how that works for ya ;)

[Alex]

What do you want to do Steve. Just be able to get the content of a page or be able to do things that require session management (anything that requires logging in and having cookies set and stuff).

The former is much easier than the latter. It can be done in about 15 lines of code with PHP and there are plenty of web sites that will do it for you. The latter is much more difficult.

For example, I can easily make a page with the URL of http://www.alexstroup.com/ that loads the MiceChat home page. But it will only do so as if you aren't logged in.

[innerSpaceman]

Oh, I gotta be able to post. Just looking? Never enough for me. Might be more frustrating than no access at all.

[€uroMeinke]

I got a cell phone PDA to circumvent my work restrictions - Fine, I'll leave your device alone, but I'm still checking my personal email you bastards, and maybe even a restricted webn page or two.

[innerSpaceman]

My firm has no problem with my checking my email ... or venturing anywhere else for less than an hour or so per day. It's just the places that I spend a lot of time on that eventually get blocked.


Someone please save me the shame of having Micechat blocked, as that's what I've been reduced to. Proxy sites sound like the (im)perfect solution. How do I do it?????

[Morrigoon]

iSm: hey, you could try the numerical LoT address, see if they blocked taht on ya

[Moonliner]

So what would keep an industrious IT type from just blocking your access to the proxy site?

[Alex]

I've tried to find any of the proxy sites that will allow you to define the site accessed and then properly handle cookie and session information but haven't yet. They are all set up for specific sites such as MySpace and other such things.

And the coding for doing that is beyond me at my level of education.

But yeah, if they're specifically blocking sites based on your actual traffic patterns then they're just going to block the proxy.

[DisneyFan25863]

I've tried to find any of the proxy sites that will allow you to define the site accessed and then properly handle cookie and session information but haven't yet.

The downloadable scripts do just that. Check out hotscripts.com.

It looks like you are just accessing the url of the place the proxy is on. They never know.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, but it will take them months to catch on to it. It's not like it's constantly monitored. They just do it every once in a blue.

Ok, post real slowly for me now .... the LoT numerical address? Huh?

signed,

Tech-challenged

[Alex]

The IP address for MiceChat.

Rather than typing "http://www.micechat.com" in your browser address bar type "69.16.243.148" and see if that works. Every domain on the internet is actually represented by a number like that. The domain names we are all familiar with is just an added layer so that we can actually remember them.

The lazy IT person will just block the textual domain name without blocking the actual IP address. Kind of like if your phone system was set up so you couldn't call 1-800-FLOWERS but you could still call 1-800-356-9377.

[Kevy Baby]

So what is the numeric address for LoT?

How can you look up what a numeric address is? (I tried seaarching for this info and couldn't find it).

[innerSpaceman]

Is that the number in Post 7 above?

I doubt my IT guy is quite that stupid or lazy, but I'll give it a shot.



Actual proxy sites sound much more promising. Anyone have a bead on one of those?

[Kevy Baby]

Is that the number in Post 7 above?No. That's the number for Mice Chat.

[Morrigoon]

So what's the numerical for LoT? How do we find this info?

[DisneyFan25863]

I don't think LOT is on a dedicated server or has a static IP, so I'm not sure if you can. When I ping it, the IP address I'm given just takes you to Lunarpages.

[Morrigoon]

http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html

Worth a look-see.

snippet:
BOING BOING'S GUIDE TO DEFEATING CENSORWARE
(see story here)

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage
and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

If your employer or corrupt, undemocratic, dictator-based government uses a filtering service such as Secure Computing's SmartFilter to block access to BoingBoing.net -- or anything else online -- you can try the following workarounds:

* Distributed BoingBoing mirrors everything on BoingBoing.net at random IP addresses to foil filters.

* Read "Technical Ways to Get Around Censorship," a helpful primer from Reporters Without Borders: Link.

* Google can act as a lightweight, proxy-like tool for accessing forbidden sites -- but don't rely on this method for anonymity. Link.

* The popular RSS reader Bloglines can offer lightweight help in some cases, too. Boing Boing reader Tom Jeziorny says, "I work for a BIG financial services company that apparently uses (not-so-) SmartFilter because BoingBoing has recently become a forbidden site. I use Bloglines as my RSS reader so that I can access the blogs I read from work and home. It turns out that Bloglines is acting as sort of a proxy, since it connects to your RSS feed and not my computer, I'm still able to read BoingBoing at work. Since you publish the full text of your entries in your feeds I'm not missing much, though any photos linked directly from your site are edited out."

* A group called Peacefire created proxy software called Circumventor to bypass censorware. Install this software on your home computer and allow others to use your proxy to access the web, or use your proxy from work or school to access any web site. (Thanks, Sean!)

[Morrigoon]

aww crap, it didn't keep the hyperlinks in the text. Ah well, use my link and read it there.

[Morrigoon]

Ohh, one of the links it gave was this: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15013