A solution for visiting blocked Internet websites

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 25, 2007
Updated • Dec 8, 2014
Internet
|
6

Companies, universities, schools and pretty much everyone is blocking or banning contents on the web that they deem inappropriate, questionable or distracting.

The banning spree goes sometimes too far however with the consequence that legitimate websites and services are caught in the net as well and become inaccessible.

There is a quick solution for accessing blocked sites and I would like to introduce it here. All that you need is some webspace on the Internet and php support there.

You can take a look at free hosting solutions for instance and sign up at one of the sites mentioned there or you could pay about $6 and get your own domain name and some webspace for about $4 per month.

The advantage of your own domain name is that you will have an email account associated with it which you can normally use to check and send emails from using a webmailer. This is helpful if websites such as gmail, hotmail and yahoo mail are blocked in your network as well.

Accessing blocked websites:

All you need to do is to find a web proxy that is working. You could search the Internet for working ones or upload and use your own web proxy. The latter method has several advantages. It is unlikely that a proxy gets banned that is not generating lots of traffic. The difference between one user who is visiting blocked websites and dozens is noticeable.

Another advantage is that the proxy will not get banned if the administrator decides to block a list of proxies that were found on the Internet. Yours will not be on that list because no one but you knows about it.

I suggest to use the script mentioned at the end of this article. The PHP proxy script just needs to be moved to the webserver, no installation is necessary on your part. Create a new directory on your webspace and make sure you name it inconspicuously, holidays or something like that.

It could be a good move to password protect that directory using a simply .htaccess file. You need to make sure that your hoster has that enabled. If he has use the Htaccess Password Generator to generate a password and protect the directory with the proxy.

Send and Receive Emails:

Sending Emails is not a problem if you have your own webspace with php enabled. You can simply upload one of the many contact forms like the one mentioned at the end of this article. You do need to change one file to add your email address to it. In the case of the contact form that I mentioned below it is the file output.php. Just edit the existing email address to yours twice and you are ready to go.

Upload the script to your webspace and send emails to your account. This is great for quick note taking, sending urls for instance or to do lists.

Checking your mails is a little bit more complicated and I suggest to use the webmailer of a webhosting company for this. Another possibility would be to find a webmail provider that is not banned in your network yet. Search for small ones in Google using terms like 'free email accounts' and similar search strings.

To be able to read all of your mail you could simply forward the mail from other accounts to this one. This would make it possible to read all of your mails while in the network that has most of the webmailers, including your default one, blocked.

Read More:

Free PHP Hoster List
PHP Proxy Script - no longer available, try Glyph instead.
Htaccess Password Generator

Summary
A solution for visiting blocked Internet websites
Article Name
A solution for visiting blocked Internet websites
Description
The article walks you through the steps of accessing websites and services even though they are blocked in the network you are connected to.
Author
Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.