There are two main issues that you will identify eventually. It first takes time to compile a list of proxies and it second requires regular validation of those servers to make sure that they can be used for regular Internet surfing and other activities.

The freeware ST Proxy Switcher resolves both of those issues. The program ships without any proxy servers but with the functionality to download proxies after startup from the Internet. Proxy servers are divided into categories like HTTP Anonymous, Socks 5 or HTTP High Anonymous. Downloads seem to be limited to 20 proxies and you may find multiple lists under some categories that you need to download separately.

The program suggests to download a country IP database from the Internet to identify the region or country a proxy is hosted in during checks. You can verify all downloaded proxy servers with a click on the check proxy button in the main program interface. This performs a variety of lookups inlcuding the server’s response time, region, status and proxy type. One of the issues that I have with the display here is that the program does not list if a proxy is anonymous or not, and it does not appear if a test for anonymity (aka IP spilling) is run during checks. It is therefor a good idea to test your IP before you start other Internet activities. You can lookup your IP here on Ghacks.

You can activate a proxy from the list with a simple click and it will automatically be used in all compatible programs. This includes Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari but not the Firefox web browser (at least not the Aurora version). There are no configuration options to select specific programs that you want to use the proxy server with which may be a issue for some users.

The program supports adding and verifying custom proxy server lists. If you have a list you can import it into the proxy switcher application to use it semi-automatically there.

Another nice to have but missing feature is automatic proxy rotation. Windows users can download ST-ProxySwitcher from the ST ProxySwitcher homepage.

Of course when you open up your /etc/squid/squid.conf file you might be a bit overwhelmed. So in this article I am going to show you two ways to limit access with Squid (instead of tossing the whole configuration file at you at once). I will also show you the quick and dirty method of installing Squid on a Fedora 13 machine. Once done with this article, you will at least be able to control network access by time or by IP address. In later articles we will discuss other ways to control network access with Squid.

Installation

Installation is quite simple. You can do this two ways: Command line or using the Add/Remove Software tool. Let’s take a look at the latter first.

In order to install Squid from the Add/Remove Software tool follow these steps:

1. Click System > Administration > Add/Remove Software
2. Search for “squid” (no quotes).
3. Select the Squid application for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Now let’s take a look at the command line version of the same task. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window by clicking Applications > System Tools > Terminal.
2. Issue the command su and then enter your root password.
3. Issue the command yum install squid.
4. If your system requires dependencies, allow them as well as the installation to continue.
5. When finished exit out of the root prompt by issuing the command exit.

That’s it. Squid is now installed. Now, on to the configuration.

Configuration

The configuration file you need to edit is /etc/squid/squid.conf. Open that file up with your favorite text editor and get ready to configure. The first set up I am going to show you is how to restrict access by time. To do this you are going to create Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Let’s assume you are restricting access on an internal LAN with an IP scheme of 192.168.1.0 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. And let’s say you are restricting access for your teenage children such that they can only access the network from the hours of 3:00pm until 7:00pm (just a random time I used for example). For this you will need to add two ACLs to your configuration file. Add this first section to the bottom of the ACL section of the file (You will see a long list of lines that start out acl). For restricting to the times I prescribed above the ACLs would look like:

acl home_network src 192.168.1.0/24
acl kids_hours time M T W H F 15:00-19:00

The first line defines the source of the connection and the second line defines the allowed time period.

To finish off this configuration you will need to add another line, this time you will add this section at the bottom of the http_access section (Under the Insert your own rules… here section). This line looks like:

http_access allow home_network kids_hours

NOTE: You could also create an acl for weekend hours to allow more access during those days.

Now, let’s say one of those teens has had trouble with grades and you want to completely restrict access to only that one machine (say the IP address for that child is 192.168.1.10), while continuing to control access to the other machines. To do this you could add a third ACL like so:

acl RestrictedHost src 192.168.1.10

Back to the http_access section you would then add this line:

http_access deny RestrictedHost

Save and close that file. Now restart Squid with the command (run as the root user):

/etc/rc.d/init.d/squid restart

The last thing you need to do is to configure the PCs of those who need to go through the Proxy server. Remember, Squid uses port 3128.

Final thoughts

Squid is a very powerful tool that can be used to to limit access in numerous ways. What I have shown you is only scratching the surface of Squid’s power, but it give you a good idea where to start and how far it can go.

The web proxy checker is a lightweight tool for the Windows operating system that can check various proxy servers. The types that it can check are:

• SOCKS4
• SOCKS5
• HTTP
• HTTPS

The user who wants to check proxies can either load them from a text file or paste urls that point to proxies in the interface directly. The free web proxy checker will then parse the urls or text documents line by line and check the proxy servers against the rules configured by the user.

It is possible to check the proxy server against a url (the default is the Gmail url) or a host name and port with a ping always being performed in the beginning to sort out bad proxies immediately that do not respond positively.

The web proxy checker comes with extensive options from selecting random user agents, connection settings, detecting a proxy server’s country of origin or running a distribution web server to logging options and statistics. Some of the options are for advanced users only but users with little to no knowledge should be able to start their first proxy check in under five minutes with the default configuration.

Web Proxy Checker is available for download at the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system including Windows 7.

Privacy advocates have already expressed great concern as proxy servers are not only in use by individuals who want to protect their privacy but also by companies and even Internet Service Providers, sometimes without the knowledge of the end user. VPN (Virtual Private Network) would for example be classified as proxy servers under the new legislation. As is the popular Tor client that has been created specifically to counter censorship in the world. Several web browsers like Opera Mini or Opera 10 are also making use of proxy servers to compress data to decrease the time it takes to load websites.

The United States Sentencing Commission will vote on the new legislation on April 15. It is set to take effect on November 1 if is is passing the voting process. You can read up on the EFFs stance here

This has the advantage to be able to exactly configure websites that should be accessed with proxies enabled. Switching proxy servers on and off is therefor a thing of the past after the initial configuration has been completed. Users can subscribe to a preconfigured list of websites that should be accessed using a web proxy server and add their own websites in the list. It is currently not possible to assign web proxy servers to specific sites but this is mentioned as a feature to come on the developer’s homepage.

It is currently only possible to add websites to the Firefox add-on and select either a preconfigured web proxy server or add a custom proxy that should be used to access those websites.

The preconfiogured web proxy servers have not been working 100% perfectly at the time of testing. The prospect is however excellent. Definitely a Firefox add-on to look out for.

That is probably the same line of thought that the developer of Prime Proxies had when he created his website. The website publishes an up to date list of working web proxy servers which are checked regularly so that the chance of encountering a non working proxy server is slim.

Proxies are divided into three categories that are named after the proxy script that is being used on the proxy websites. The three main scripts are PHP Proxy, CGI Proxy and Glyph. Some proxy scripts work better on specific websites than others and it comes down to finding the web proxy server script that displays the favorite websites properly.

The Prime Proxies database contains a list of more than 2300 working and 5000 dead proxy servers. That should be enough for everyone to find a web proxy server that is working and not banned at the location that you are accessing the Internet.

How does a web proxy work ?

A network bans a website either by its IP, its name or part of its name. A web proxy makes only shows its own address to the network and not the actual destination of the user. The admin of the network will think everything is fine and you are free to reach the site that is banned. The only thing that might happen is that the admin is banning the web proxy as well, but this is not a big deal either. Hundreds of web proxies exist, just switch to a new one and you are ready to visit the banned site again.

Setup your own Web Proxy Server:

Let us assume that all proxy websites have been banned in your network, you can´t find a single web proxy that is still working. Your best choice is to create your own web proxy at an address that only you know. All you need is the php web proxy proxy and some webspace with php to upload it to. Search Google for free webspace php and you should find some hosts that allow you to use php and upload your web proxy to them.

You can alternatively use a cgi web proxy which needs a webspace with cgi enabled.
Web Proxy List:

Please not that the list does not display if the webproxy is able to handle scripts, I did not find a reliable way to make a test for all languages out there, therefor this has not been added to the list. I also removed websites that loaded slowly, displayed errors or forced you to click on an ad before you could use the service.

It is most likely that the name “proxy” might have been banned as well, try using web proxies that do not have proxy i their url, this might help.

Free Web Proxy List

• 75i
• Anonymouse
• Back Fox
• Browse at School
• Bypass browser
• Cecid
• Cgi Proxy
• Conceal Me
• Dark Proxy
• Dave Proxy
• Dejacey
• Direct Proxy
• Dtunnel
• Dzzt
• Famous 5
• Fly Proxy
• Free Proxy
• Free Proxy Server
• Fsurf
• Ghost Click
• Hide and go surf
• Hide your Info
• Hujiko
• Iam new guy
• Idoxy
• Let me By
• Lin Fox
• Mr. Proxy
• Neo Proxy
• Net Sack
• Peoples Proxy
• Pr0xy
• Proxy 77
• Proxy Anon
• Proxy Hero
• Proxy Lord
• Proxy Mod
• Proxy Prince
• Proxy Snow
• Proxy Surf
• Proxytastic
• Prxxy
• Pure Privacy
• Radio Farda
• Safe for Work
• Safe Hazard
• Safe Surfer
• School Bypasser
• SD9
• Secret Browse
• Smart Proxy
• Student Proxy
• Stupid Censorship
• Surf Anon
• Surf Nameless
• The web tunnel
• TNT Proxy
• Traceless
• Unblock This
• Unbloxy
• Unipeak
• Url Encoded
• Virtual Browser
• VPN Tunnel
• Wkccp
• World Wide Proxy
• Wootage
• Work Browse
• World Want
• XXX Proxy
• Your Proxy

If none of the above work in your special case try my last resort, blockstop. It utilities the coral cdn network and uses a different method to access sites.

Sites that update their web proxy lists daily:

http://proxy.org/
http://www.centurian.org/
http://www.azproxies.com/
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/

If you think a proxy server is missing in the list let us know in the comments.

Both methods should work and I will walk you right through the installation process for both scripts and give you tips how to find out what is actually being blocked. Before we start you need to download a copy of phpproxy or cgiproxy depending on what you want and can use. You also could perform a search for free webhosting on google for instance and try to find a webhoster that supports one of the two languages, a good site that I found while searching for those terms might be freewebspace.net

1. phpproxy

Download phpproxy and unpack it to a local directory on your hard drive. All you need to do know is to upload the script to your webspace and open up the new url to check if its working allright. You might want to rename the file to something different, something that does not contain the word proxy in it to avoid filters that ban everything that has the word “proxy” in it.

You could open up the script and enter your clients ip in there to make sure that only your client will be able to connect or you could add a .htaccess file to the directory forcing everyone who wants to start the script to enter a username and password. Again, use google if you like to find out more information about .htaccess

The php script has some requirements, make sure you read the readme file which is included and check to see if your hoster has those requirements enabled.

2. cgiproxy

Your hoster has to have cgi enabled in order to run this script. Many free hosters do not offer cgi or only some preinstalled scripts. Make sure it is enabled before you start the installation process.

First, download the source and unpack it to a local directory.

Now, open the .cgi file and take a look at the configuration. You can edit lots of settings from within, for example you could configure the script that way that it only allows text to go through the proxy but no images. Everything is explained in detail and all options are explained with comments, browse through the file, edit the options to your liking and save the new file.

After that upload the script to your cgi directory if that is required by your hoster and open the url from your browser. You are now ready to browse the web anonymously, to check if that is really the case load a website like whatismyip.com as the first site and check if the ip matches with the server the script is installed and not your computers ip. If that is the case you´ve done everything right and can surf anonymously. (there are still ways to find out your ip, just in case you are wondering)

3. What is being blocked ?

a) If you can access the proxy from the client they only block domains / ips.
b) If you can´t access the proxy they might be banning filenames that contain proxy as well, try changing the filename.

[tags]cgiproxy, tunnel, phpproxy, proxy, setup your own proxy, anon, anonymously, privacy[/tags]