Bypass college Internet Filters

These days, schools are so strapped for cash, they cant afford the Internet bandwidth for students to do useful and fun thing on school computers. Some schools expect students to actually do work during IT lessons, and some IT departments just don't like YouTube. However, the days are over when they can lock down the system enough to stop determined students from using the Internet as they please.
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Contents 1 De-filters 2 Using a new proxy 3 Creating your own proxy 4 HTTPS 5 UltraSurf

De-filters

These are websites which take a URL, and collect the content for you. The work because the filters only see you downloading data from an unblocked website (the de-filter); the connection to the banned site is from another external web server so it doesn't pass through your schools filters.
These are some good de-filter websites:

• defilter.co.uk
• lazyfoo.co.uk
• www.browserunblocker.net

These are just a few of the hundreds of de-filter websites revealed by a quick google search. Where possible, tick the box that turns on some kind of encryption. This prevents the IT department seeing what sites you gave unblocked. Also, sites that use the HTTPS protocol are even harder to be caught with.
However, de-filter sites do not always unblock active content such as flash, or videos so they are not perfect. If you find a good de-filter, don't give it to anyone because it will soon spread round the school, and end up blocked.

 

Using a new proxy

Most school filters work by directing all traffic through a proxy server, which scans URLs for blocked keywords. Internet Explorer uses the system wide proxy for HTTP. However, FireFox can have its own proxy set. Firefox will route all traffic through the open proxy server, avoiding using banned keywords in the URL. This traffic will then be sent through the filter proxy by the operating system, but will not be blocked if all has worked well.
1) Get a copy of FireFox on a memory stick. It's best to use the portable version available here because it wont leave evidence of running FireFox on the main system hard drive. This version also remembers your bookmarks, passwords etc.
2) Set up FireFox to a proxy. Open the Tools menu, then click Options. Then click the Connection Settings button in the resultant window. Click the radio button for "Manual proxy configuration", and fill in relevant proxies/port numbers. A list of free proxies and port numbers is available here. Now, all should work as planned.

 

Creating your own proxy

If you have a computer at your own home that's connected to the internet, you can use software such as Psiphon to act as a proxy between your school's and your home's connection. Once you have the software installed and a proxy set up, you can use the URL it provides (typically just the user's home IP address) and paste it into your school's browser. At this point, you would enter the password you set up to access the proxy and begin browsing.
User-created Psiphon proxies are much more difficult to block than public proxies, as the connection comes from a user's home computer, rather than a public web site. Besides this, most ISPs give home connections dynamic IP addresses, meaning that any one user's home proxy will change its IP address every now and then, adding an additional layer of difficulty in tracking them.

 

HTTPS

This is the most simple of them all but sometimes does not to work. It's as simple as just adding an S on to the http. so lets say for example http://www.facebook.com/ you would change it to https://www.facebook.com/

 

UltraSurf

In my high school we use a program called UltraSurf. http://www.ultrareach.com/ All you need to do is download this to a flash drive (some kids save it to our student drives on our network, but I don't suggest this as the IT department will find out) and when you are at school run it. It will pop up with a new browser window and viola! Surf the net as you please!