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.

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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

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Quick Proxy Switcher is a lightweight 60 Kilobyte application for Internet Explorer that makes it easier to change proxy servers in the web browser. The portable application will display its main interface after execution which will display the currently configured proxy server in Internet Explorer or a blank if none is configured.

There are lines for adding and changing the default proxy server and one alternative proxy server in Internet Explorer which can be easily switched by clicking on the set button in the interface. Minimizing the application will add a system tray icon which provides a similar functionality by right-clicking it.

Users can activate the default or alternative proxy server from that menu right away. The program is best used if Internet Explorer is closed as this is usually needed to change settings in the web browser. It does however work fine with the most popular editions of Internet Explorer including Internet Explorer 8. Quick Proxy Switcher requires the Microsoft .net Framework.

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And don’t get my reason for using DansGuardian stop you from thinking this server could be used in other deployments. DansGuardian could be used for schools, businesses, internet cafes, etc. With that in mind let’s see just how easy this is to get running.

I installed DansGuardian on a Ubuntu Server 8.10 installation. The installation took me all of approximately 2 minutes. The complexity of the configuration of DansGuardian will depend completely on how much you need to ban.

Installation

The first thing to do is get to the command line of your server and issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install dansguardian

The above command will install the filtering system. But you’re not finished because DG requrires another tool, tinyproxy, to act as a proxy server. To install tinyproxy issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install tinyproxy

Now you’re ready to configure.

Configuration

You could start up both DansGuardian and tinyproxy now and set up your browsers to use the proxy server right now. But you might want to take a visit to a couple of .conf files as well as the banned lists for DansGuardian. You will find the configuration file for DansGuardian in /etc/dansguardian. Open this up and take a look around. The most important configuration of this file is to make sure all the ports match up. In my installation both DansGuardian and tinyproxy were set up for port 8080. Perfect.

If you have a specific need for your network, make sure you go through both configuration files, which are set up very clearly and are well commented.

The next step is to take a look at the /etc/dansguardian/lists directory. In this directory you will find nearly every type of banned list you will need. The three most popular lists are:

• bannedsitelist
• bannedurllist
• bannedphraselist

The difference between bannedurl and bannedsite is with bannedurl you are able to ban only part of a site and with banndsite you can ban an entire site. The banned lists are set up very clearly. For instance, if you want to ban a site you would see this in the bannedsitelist:

# List categorisation
#listcategory: "Banned Sites"
#List other sites to block:
badboys.com

You can list any IP you want in this section. The bannedphraselist configuration looks like this:

# To block any page with words that contain the string "sex". (ie. sexual)
# <sex>

You would uncomment out the second line from the above. Again, this configuration file is commented very well so it will be easy to set up.

Starting the Services

First start up tiny proxy with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/tinyproxy start

Now start DansGuardian with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/dansguardian start

Configuring your browsers

This is very simple. What you need to do is configure all the browsers you want to go through the content filter to use the IP address of the DansGuardian server as their proxy server.

Final Thoughts

If you have ever wanted to use a content filtering server but didn’t want to have to spend hours setting one up, DansGuardian is your solution. Not only is this solution simple, it is reliable and easy to maintain.

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A side-effect was that users of those Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom were not able to modify other Wikipedia articles anonymously anymore.

It did not take long however before some users created a Greasemonkey script Antiproxy 4 Wikipedia so that users from the United Kingdom who cannot edit Wikipedia entries anonymously anymore have the opportunity to do so. A Firefox extension based on that Greasemonkey script has been designed in the meanwhile which can also be used to edit articles anonymously.

A more technical explanation can be found at Computerworld:

The measures applied caused the ISPs to redirect traffic for a significant portion of the UK’s Internet population through six proxy servers, which can log and filter the content that is available to the end user, Wikinews say. But the knock on effect resulted in Wikipedia being unable to distinguish UK users from one another by their IP address. That triggered Wikipedia’s anti-abuse mechanism, blocking all non-registered UK users from editing articles, according to the foundation.

A search for Virgin Killer will reveal the album cover on many websites who are still available for UK users.

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Finch tries to achieve a similar goal. The web service acts pretty much like a web proxy with the difference that bandwidth reduction and not anonymity is the top priority. Finch will not load CSS files, no images and no scripts. Stripping a website of most of its contents reduces its size tremendously. The size of the New York Times homepage is reduced by 94% when using Finch.

This method has some serious disadvantages though. Many websites become unusable. Finch does not support scripts which are required by some to function properly. Cookies are not supported as well which meaning logins won’t function properly as well.

Finch works best on static websites or those that function without scripts and cookies. Running the website through Finch will reduce the bandwidth that is transferred which means a speed gain and reduction of the monthly transfer rate. It’s on the other hand nothing for users who spend most of their time on social sites.

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Worldproxy (via Technospot) makes use of that by offering its visitors a country based proxy map. Currently only three countries are available: United States, Canada and Great Britain. The United States proxy is currently not working, the other two are working fine and it is probably just a glitch that the US proxy is not working right now.

Proxy selection by country is unfortunately the only new aspect of that proxy website. It does come with a toolbar that can be used to quickly switch between different country proxies but I normally do not install toolbars because they tend to take away screen space.

Users can suggest new countries which means that it is likely that other countries will be added to the map in future updates. The proxy obviously can be used for different things as well. It is for instance possible to check ads that are running on your website when a visitor of a certain country visits it.

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Free IP Switcher [via Tech Malaya] is the perfect tool for this situation. It offers a one click change of the network settings that require no reboot. Probably the fastest solution if you connect to different networks regularly.

What I really like is the feature to import the current network settings which spares you from the hassle to add them to the IP Changer as well. Different IP settings are available in tabs in the program and it only takes two clicks to activate another configuration.

The program offers several additional settings that can be added if needed besides the obvious ones like IP, DNS and Proxy. The Computer Name and the Workgroup can be changed as well as the default printer of the system. Last but not least it is possible to set the DNS Domain and a Wins Server.

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Checking if a website is up or not should be speedy, you do not want to waste your time analyzing large log files if there is another faster way to accomplish the check. This article is therefor concentrating on methods that reveal results in a matter of seconds which are easy to interpretate.

If you know of a method that is missing let me know and I will check it out and add it if it makes a good fit. On we go with ways to check if a website is really down.

1. Ping

A ping basically sends an Hello to a server waiting for an response. If the response takes to long a timeout will occur. Ping is measured in ms, if it is incredibly high something is wrong with either your computer, the route in between or the destination.

The command is similar in Windows and Linux, just enter ping destination, with destination being an IP or domain name, and wait for the response.

One of the many online scripts that ping servers is located at Ping.eu. It offers other network tools like Traceroute and a port check as well.

2. Traceroute

You can compare Tracerouter with a list of all the roads that you travel until you reach your destination. Only that the roads are the servers in this case that your data is send through to reach their destination. If everything is fine the destination server should appear at the end, if it is not you could get timeouts for instance.

Traceroute Tool from the University of Princeton displays the traceroute between the University and another server on the Internet, you can enter the IP or domain name of the server.

Tracert is the command that you can use in Windows to trace the route between your computer and the destination. Use the command “tracert IP” or “tracert domain” to achieve this. Traceroute is the equivalent in Linux.

3. Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS errors most of the time occur when a website is freshly registered or moving to another server. It usually takes some time to update the DNS records to point at the new server. DNS is providing information much like your phone book is. Domain names are for us puny humans who have troubles remembering those server IP addresses (64.233.161.18 for Google for instance). Problems occur when the Nameservers who translate the human entered domain names into IP addresses have still the old IP in their records while the website is already up and running on the new IP.

You can use the online script DNS Report to receive a detailed report. Green results are fine, red ones point to failures and yellow ones are warnings.

4. Proxies

Proxys can be used to establish connections to websites even if the direct route from your computer to theirs is somehow blocked. You can compare that to visiting a friend and using his computer to connect to a server that you cannot connect to. If it works it is somehow related to your computer or connection.

You can find hundreds of web based proxies at Proxy.org. Try some and see if you can connect to the website.

5. Ask someone

If you have direct contact to other users, be it in IRC, Skype, Instant Messengers or even forums, you can ask them if they would be kind enough to check a particular website for you. That`s practically a substitute to using a proxy.

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I am not a big tutorial-fan, cause I always can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m doing something here I have no particular knowledge of. And depending on what I do, this bothers me. A lot. Take sewing for instance (yes, I do indeed enjoy the fun of sewing, at least as long as it is fun); in the beginning I only did pre-set tutorials. I got to see some achievements, pretty fast as well, and was happy. But the clothings didn’t fit that well, more often than not I had to make corrections to be at least a bit satisfied with my work.

By now, I do most of my sewing patterns myself by taking bits from tutorials and knowledge and putting them together, and it works just fine for me. My point is, tutorials are often brief, giving appealing results in a short time, but often lack some of the necessary theory. Ever happened to you that you did something with a tutorial that just would not work? And after going through the complete text again, looking at all pictures, you realize there’s a small mistake in it, or something you wouldn’t have thought of, which the author took as given?

I guess that’s the reason I don’t want to write tutorials, the danger of missing something (or to cut off too much or something like that) or to have people sitting in front of it thinking “Screw this guy, this just doesn’t work!”. Plus, there are plenty of tutorials out there regarding nearly any topic. Or are there?

But – as the headline suspects – I’m gonna break with this habit for now, and give you a few shots and explanations regarding my former post. No tutorial in a classical sense, but one like I try to write my stuff as well: just concepts and ideas, but this time with pictures.

So let’s get started. Since I’m keeping my connection open most of the time, I’m using PuTTyTray instead of the regular PuTTy or its portable cousin, so some functions described here are not available in other versions.

Here we got the starting screen. Use “Settings from file” (at the bottom of the screen) to save sessions to a file in the PuTTy-directory instead of the windows-registry. An absolute must for all portable users. The first ellipse is where you type your target server’s (or router’s, in our case) IP in. If you can’t remember your IP at any time or get dynamic IPs, make an dyndns-account to save you trouble. Most Routers come with built-in dyndns-support anyway nowadays, sparing you the effort of an update tool. Of course, we want to have “SSH” as a connection type, but it’s per default enabled, so there shouldn’t be any problems.

Ah, that one took me awhile to figure out. Or to be more precise: I was swearing and cursing about the problem I encountered and by accident managed to find a solution in the settings for my terminal, which struck me to be very odd. So I wanna share my insights. The option I circled changes the character send to the server by pressing the backspace-key. Since the routers I mentioned all use some sort of linux, you might wanna change the option to the right one, “Control+? (127)”. Without that enabled, my fritzbox would only type “[^” or something like that instead of deleting the last character. Very annoying.

That one is one of the PuTTyTray-only functions I mentioned that I don’t wanna miss ever again, regardless how more convenient PuTTyPortable sometimes might be for my purposes. Leave the option on “normal” to start it in normal terminal mode. I prefer that one, since I want to use password-authentication. No use minimizing the window to tray on start, only to have to bring it back up, type the password in and minimize it again. “Always” and “Never” produced funny behaviors that I couldn’t get a hold of, but, if you wanna guess and like riddles, go and give it a try.

And oh, the “Accept single-click…”-option is nice as well, if you use this kind of restoring in all of your programs. Mixing double-click and single-click is definitely not a good idea, at least not for me.

Oh, yeah. Not that important, I gotta admit. But it would allow you to pick a username that’s hard to remember (please don’t say anything about the “root” I typed in there.. it is for demonstration purposes only!), and even harder to guess. When using password authentication, I only have to type in my password and not my username. spares me ~1.2 seconds. yay!

Painting Frenzy!! Okay, now here we go. This tab is the mekka for all your needs, the holy grail of port forwarding.
The first option I circled is recommended to use, but it is not without risks (security, mostly). Some protocols may need this option to function properly though. When you look at the entries 1, 2 and 3 they all have a source port (the first column) and a destination (the second one), like my arrows – done extremely skilled, if I may say so – try to show you.

1.) This is a standard port forwarding like used by any program. I specified my source port, which is 5700 (always select “local” as a type if unsure for the others and their doings), and a destination that is usually an IP plus a port. As you can see or at least guess, it’s for VNC (port 5900), and it’s for a fictional desktop in my home network.

2.) That one I use for the emulation of a vpn. Remember the virtual network adapter I had to create? I gave it the very innovative IP 10.0.0.1, Windows File Sharing services use port 139, so its 10.0.0.1:139 for source. The destination is my main network-hard drive with the very same port. If you specify an IP for the source port, the port is only forwarded if the accordant network adapter is used. In case of the file sharing, I had to do this, since I wanted to work both ways at the same time – local file sharing and file sharing over SSH. If you need only one of both, feel free to just forward the port without a source IP.

3.) This one is pretty much like the first, but it points to a virtual network card I created on my Router. I did so because it is forbidden to map any ports directly to the routers own IP, but mapping to the virtual NIC is allowed. Here, I’m forwarding localhost’s port 80 (do NOT do this when running a webserver or any software using port 80) to the virtual NIC’s port 80, so I can display my router’s status page in my browser here at work, taking a look at phone lists and the like. I also could’ve made a port forwarding like “6666 192.168.178.253:80″, to view my routers page then, I would have to connect to “localhost:6666″ in my browser, as well as for connecting my VNC, I have to connect to “<dyndns-address>:5700″ instead of just “<dyndns-address>”.

Be careful with the Connection -> Proxy-Tab though. You don’t have to specify anything here for PuTTy to provide the SOCKS-proxy I mentioned. This is only necessary if PuTTy is forced (or wanted) to use a proxy to connect to the target net (usually, the internet) itself, like when using PuTTy over TOR for instance, which is by the way in my opinion the most comfortable way of using TOR there is.

Oh my, I almost forgot that one.. this is crucial when keeping your connection up and running for a long time. If the connection gets broken there is a chance that your server-component remains active and running on the router, and if your reconnect, you got a second one running, and a third one if that happens again.. you catch my drift. I chose a value of 60 seconds, and it works for me. It was a more or less random choice though, other values might do equally fine.

Okay. I admit, that didn’t hurt that much at all. Maybe I will just… keep posting funny daubed pictures about programs I use…

cya all soon! :)

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I was no exception to this when I decided to fool around a bit with my AVM Fritz!Box (Broadband Router quite common in Germany and Austria that runs with Linux) and installed – among other amusing things – the dropbear SSH Server on it. I was then able to connect to my home network from all around the world using just my dyndns-account and PuTTy, or better his cousin PuTTyPortable, which runs from thumb drives without leaving traces behind on the host system. Oh the joy!

After going through the massive troubles of installing and configuring dropbear via FTP and VM, I first started to think about the use I could get out of this.

note: I didn’t intend to give instructions of how to use PuTTy or to set up those functions I mention, more to give some inspiration. Google helps all, but if someone is interested in a particular HowTo, just ask, I’m here ;).

First of all, I found out that I could use my encrypted Connection to eliminate some holes in my firewall, VNC always being a big thorn in my side. If I use the standard ports, it’s insecure, and if I use custom ports, I’m bound to fail to remember them when needed. With the SSH Connection, I only have to remember one custom port (in fact, PuTTy does remember it), and I can spare the additional effort and cpu time for encrypting VNC sessions, as well as I could stuff all commonly used holes in my firewall.

Incredibly simple, but at the same time incredibly effective. If you want something like this, the tunneling function (also port forwarding) is for you. It also allowed me – with some tweaking on the router as well – to view the html-based configuration side from outside over the secure line, taking a look at the list of calls received in absence.

The next useful function I could think of was to use my secure Connection to obscure my internet traffic. Not to circumvent IP-Checks, but to prevent the casual network analyzer of having anything to work with besides my current IP at home. No destination, no protocol, no data. Setting it up was even easier than setting up the port tunnels, which, from time to time, tend to be a real pain in the ass, so to speak. For every open SSH Connection and without further configuration, PuTTy procures a full-fledged SOCKS proxy server for you. Ain’t that nice? And with plugins like QuickProxy for Firefox you are free to switch it on or off as you like. Which, of course, is also available as a portable version. But you all knew that already.

The third function I use pretty often was a nasty one to get by, but it was definitely worth the trouble, since it fits my setting nigh perfectly. I’m quite fond of VPNs, but I have yet to encounter a VPN-software that really satisfies me and my personal needs and/or beliefs. So, among the other amusing programs I set up on my router (as mentioned above), was a VPN-server, to allow me to connect to my network-enabled hard drives at home. To cut it short, it worked, I felt secure and all, but it was impossible to take the solution with me, since all VPN-Implementations (OpenVPN, that is) required installation and the creation (and configuration) of a virtual network adapter. So I tried to bring up a feasible solution involving PuTTy.

The easy one was to use a protocol that allows you to transfer files, (s)FTP, SCP, or even HTTP, but all require a special server component to be run on the target, which is not possible for me without leaving one of my computers on, which is entirely out of the question. The NAS is even able to manage FTP, but it would require me to rely on FTP and FTP alone. No Samba and FTP at the same time for the same files. So I had to discard that as well.

The next thought was to just forward port 139 (used by windows filesharing services) to my target network. It would’ve worked, but it would’ve rendered me incapable of using the filesharing service for local shares. I’m using this solution at work, so it’s either home or work. It would work, I could only start up the connection of needed, and so on, but I wasn’t just happy with it, so I digged further.

If I had found a software for windows, that used not the windows filesharing service but an own implementation of it, I could just tell it to use another port and forward that one, but unfortunately, I found no such program.
The best I could come up with was to create a network adapter as VPN does, but without configuring anything on it except for a meaningless IP, and then forward all traffic on 10.0.0.1:139 to my network at home. Works like a charm, but if anyone ever happens to find a program like mentioned above, I would be more than happy to give it a try. Portable Applications preferred ;)

Another function available, though I did not use it very often, was the forwarding of the X11-protocol used by common Linux-desktops, which gives you the power of controlling the remote computer similar to VNC but without the need for additional software.

The last one I want to mention is not one of PuTTy, but one that uses its opened shell to go through with it. A little program called etherwake can be run on common Linux-powered systems which enables you to start your computer without actually sitting in front of it via the magic of WOL (pun intended). A pre-set shell-script that’s run with a short command, a VNC server installed as a service, and you’re good to go. Connect the Router, wake up the computer, connect using VNC and take a look at the all-important document you left at home.

So, if you happen to own a Fritz!Box or one of them shiny, new, world-wide-available OpenSource-Routers, or just an old crappy computer that could deliver a reasonable SSH server for an equally reasonable amount of watts spent, maybe those ideas incorporated one for you.

Also, please notice that PuTTyTray works from Thumb Drives as well without leaving any Data behind (if you use the “session from file”-option), but has the advantage that it can be minimized to the system tray.

If you’re planning on keeping the connection up for quite some time, also remember to activate the “Keep Alive”-function ;)

Edit: After getting rebuked for not doing it from the beginning, I’d like to incorporate some useful links that might get you started.
Complete Installation Guide for Telnet, FTP, SSH, WOL & VPN on a Fritz!Box, German.
You can also get this functions creating a nice and easy pseudo-firmware-image here, but I guess one could lack the insight needed to fill in all the right information if he never did it manually before. So, feel free to screw around using the above link and once you figured it all out, use this one. Also German, but with very little text ;)
Another tutorial, this time for the Linksys WRT54G, including SSH and Tunneling.

Thx again to Ace_NoOne, who could’ve used Google instead ;)

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All forms are added as well in another layer, including search boxes and the like for instance. The Picidae test server is really fast and was able to deliver an image of Ghacks in just a few seconds, did not take much longer than loading the websites normally. The script is offered on the website as well and everyone may setup a Picidae server on his own dedicated server.

Even webspace owners can take part by offering an additional layer of protection. They can install a Picidae proxy that is connected to a Picidae server. This would mean that even if the server would be blocked it could still be accessed by using a Picidae proxy.

Picidae is especially useful when searching Google or other search engines in a country that is know to block certain search results. The Picidae script is able to query the search engines that are outside of your country which means that you will receive uncensored search results.

Read More:

Picidae Test Server
Picidae Server Script

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The second new feature is a print function. It is not working correctly yet but I’m in contact with the author and the issue will be fixed soon. The print function which is available on all single articles pages makes it possible to print the content of the articles without the sidebars.

I have come to the decision to offer the myspace song download script on another url so that everyone will be able to download songs from myspace by simply pasting the bands homepage. The script is available at unblockr.

Last but not least I have changed the proxy that was used at Unblockr for the last days. I think the new one is even faster and displays more websites correctly.

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• Is it fast or slow ?
• Which common websites can you access, which do not work ?
• Did you encounter problems when using the proxy ?
• Is the proxy banned in your network / country / on a website ?

The proxy will be up for a while and probably be replaced with another script if the results are not that great. It could however remain if everyone is happy with the results. And now, the most important aspect, the url: Unblockr

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I’m trying to build the service that way that the main use of this proxy is to access websites that have been banned by an administrator in your school, university or workplace or even by your government. The proxy can’t be used for massive downloads, spam, p2p and the like to avoid that it will ever get banned from the hoster.

This is the first test run, I will soon come up with more information about the concept and why it will be not likely that this proxy will ever be banned from a network. There will be a free version of this proxy which will cover the costs with advertisement and a paid service which will be unique to the user who pays a small monthly fee and will be of course without advertisement. Unique proxies will be password protected as well.

I’m looking for about 10 testers who would like to test the service and how it performs on several websites that they visit daily. It will take a few days from now on to set everything up and I will select long time visitors of ghacks over new ones.

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The requirements are that the webserver is up and running at your computer and that the Apache module is started. Download one of the many proxy scripts and unzip it. I suggest you create a new sub directory in htdocs, don’t name it proxy . use a name that does not tell anyone what the files in the directory could be for. This is to prevent keyword filters that could block your local url if they find the keyword proxy in it. Name it tennis for instance.

Move the files index.php, javascript.js, PHProxy.class.php, style.css and url_form.inc into the new directory. Et voila, you are done. Test the script by accessing it locally (http://localhost/tennis/) ; If the proxy script appears everything is fine and you can access it from anywhere on the net as long as your local computer is connected to the web and the apache module is started.

It is highly unlikely that this proxy is banned by the admins of your school, university or company because it runs on a dynamic IP and no one has ever used it before.

To secure the directory do the following: Create a .htaccess file – Windows Explorer does not like this kind of files but a good editor should be able to create the file without errors. Add the following lines to the file and save it.


Options All -Indexes
AuthName "Go Away ;)"
AuthType Basic

A better protection would be to use a password protection, this is done the following way:

Create an encrypted password and copy the result in a file named randomly starting with a . – for instance .grqwev ; Place the file into the directory that you want to protect. Add a .htaccess file to the directory with the following lines.

AuthUserFile /tennis/.grqwev
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Top Secret”
Require valid-user

That is it. You password protected your proxy script running on your local computer. Only users who know the password are able to login and use the proxy, everyone else will not be able to see what lies behind the password request.

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It describes methods to censor websites like blocking url’s via the DNS server that for instance the German government likes to use which can be easily countered by using the IP or an DNS server that does not block the website. So, for every action (censorship) you find the corresponding reaction (bypass). Excellent read for everyone whose country, company or institution has decided to block certain information.

Kinds of censorship described:

• Blocked URL’s via the DNS-server
• Forced proxy server / transparent proxy
• Keyword filter
• Blocked ports
• Software on the client (child protection e.t.c)
• Censorware on the server (inside of networks)
• Whitelist
• IP blocking on the routers

Ways to bypass Censorship:

• Using a different ISP
• Using a not censoring DNS-server
• Using a non censoring proxy server
• Using a Web-2-phone service
• Using a webproxy
• Get Webpages via eMail
• Using steganography
• Using a special proxy like peer-2-peer program
• Special Services

Everything is explained in detail and links are provided where necessary. I have decided to pick out some of the more common methods to censor and bypass information in the coming days – stay tuned.

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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 proxys exist, just switch to a new one and you are ready to visit the banned site again.

Setup your own Web Proxy:

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 alternativly 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 proxys that do not have proxy i their url, this might help.

Web Proxy

• 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.

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If firefox is banned or not available like in my office you are stuck with appending the chars manually. That´s what I thought. A avid reader of my blog mentioned the blockstop coral cdn frontend to me and it is working nicely. It reminds me a lot of those web proxy sites. Enter a url, click get url and a blockstop frame appears above the sites content of the url that you want to visit.

This is not a proxy of course but a way to access cached pages through a web frontend without installing software on your computer or entering the url and extension manually. I will try this one when I´am at work today. (we only have Internet Explorer and many websites are locked out from the network) Please let me know if this is working for your special case and if you witness any limitations or drawbacks.

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Corel CDN caches websites thus making them available even though the original website might be off line or blocked. To access a website you simply append .nyud.net:8080 to the url. For ebay.com it would be therefor: http://www.ebay.com.nyud.net:8080

You unfortunately have to append this manually to every url you want to reach. That is, unless you are using firefox. Coral CDN offers a firefox extension which allows you to either Coralize this page or Coralize this link which means that you do not have to append .nyud.net:8080 manually to the url.

Finally they also offer a bookmarklet which should be working with Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Safari as well. Drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks and use it from there.

Please note that I can´t guarantee that you will be able to view the cached page and that this probably does not work with dynamic or personalized pages. (Email, Ebay account)

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