Working Around Restrictions

[Exile69]

Alright, don't take this the wrong way, but I'd like to work around my school's network restrictions. Legally of course. Last thing I need is being hauled downtown just so I could access a website. Anyways, I have to log on to my account through the school's network, which has many restrictions, prominently not being able to access certain websites, i.e eBaum's World, Addictinggames.com, things like that. No control panel, I do have a task manager, but no Internet options through Internet Explorer, but I've installed Firefox in an attempt to get around it to no avail. I am allowed to access Internet options within Firefox. When I try to access the website it'll tell me "Access Denied" and then have a Symantec Internet security copyright at the bottom. So it's either from a program installed on the machine, or they blocked the websites through the network. Are there any ways around this?

[Got EpOx]

I have the same problems at my school i've used Firefox to access the internet by entering the proxy server address but i cannot seem to get any further i just need some legal tips to get further than just using another browser.

[Aedan]

First, find out your site's policy. If you're trying to access a website against the policy, then expect to be hauled downtown. On some sites, just the act of attempting to bypass content restrictions would put you in a danger area.

Secondly, understand that: a) your traffic is being logged; b) there is a content filter on the network.

Forget any software running on the local machine - It's not. Instead, it's probably running on the firewall that controls access between the local network and the Internet. Symantec produce a product called "Symantec Web Security" (SWS for short). This can be either set up as a seperate proxy server or, as in your case, set up as an inline module for a firewall. That means that any web requests made from any machines on the network will go through the firewall. Thus, SWS will examine the requests no matter which browser you're using. It is also capable of logging every single request, and generates indepth usage statistics if necessary. It can also hook into network authentication using LDAP, so it can track people based on their network login.

There are ways around this, but they will all put you on the wrong side of site policy.

[Got EpOx]

I want to bypass the restrictions but i also don't want to get in trouble.

[devilmyarse]

Not really possible, the only way around it is contacting the admins and asking them nicely to allow the site you want to access. If it's part of your work then fair enough they might let you have access but if it's just general time wasting sites then you got no chance. Unless you're in with the admins.

One way is using a proxy, this basically acts like a loophole on the security, it bluffs the filter and loads websites from a single 'allowed' site. These proxy are easy to find, just google it. Finding one that will get passed the filter at your school is a different story entirely!

Other advice i have from when i was at school is if you really want to find something, the web is a VERY big place, sometimes you can find what you are looking from somewhere else that gets by the filters (ie on alternate language websites these aren't filtered by the filter, as they are non-english (most of the time).

Which leads onto my next hint, using babel fish to translate a website url into english from french (even though it's an english site) used to work very well on my old school's web filter. Babel fish was seen as a required education tool and was never blocked and the way that babel fish works is very similar to the way a proxy works!

I take no responsibility for anything that happens to you from you using these tips.

The admins are mostly lazy and chances are you will never get caught (i never did) My friend did but he was stupid, he bragged about his '1337 haxx0rin skillz' of getting around the filter a little too loudly and got ratted out by a teacher who overheard him! Hehe!

[Aedan]

Be aware that a number of filters are a bit more intelligent now. The Symantec one (properly configured) analyses the words on the page to figure out if you're allowed to see it or not, rather than just relying on a URL.

[fantomfreq]

I used to be able to bypass my high school's filter quite easily. I found a webpage that would let me ping sites from a browser interface. The page would tell me the IP address of the page I wanted to access and then I just plugged the IP into the browser. Easy stuff!