Following our previous trick on accessing restricted websites that are blocked by your employer, college or government, there have been several requests from college students and office workers asking for workarounds to access social networking websites that are blacklisted.
The most common websites that are blocked in schools include Bebo, MySpace, Hi5, Xanga, Orkut, Facebook and in some cases, Youtube. We share a couple of options to bypass the internet ban and they includes using proxy servers, special mobile websites and screen sharing software:
Trick A: Most solutions to unblock websites suggest using web proxies to bypass restrictions. Open Directory has a comprehensive list of public anonymous web-based proxy servers that you may want to try. [How proxies work ?]
But chances are that your school administration has already blocked access to most proxy servers as well. In that case, you have some more options:
Trick B: Surf the web using Mowser, a new service that's free and converts any website into a mobile phone friendly format. The other option that may help access blocked website is Bitty Browser, a miniature web browser that is meant for embedding inside other web pages. Another solution may be Google Mobile Search.
Trick C: Finally, a option that will always work provided you have your sister or mom at home to help you - Use a screen sharing software like Microsoft Tahiti, CrossLoop or Yuuguu.
Ask someone at home to accept your screen sharing invitation request and browse the web at school using your home computer. This will enable you to access any website or instant messenger like Skype or Yahoo from the school or work computer. You may also try remote control software that comes with Win XP Pro instead of screen sharing apps to access restricted sites.
If Google Talk is blocked by your employer, use the Firefox trick and connect with Google Talk buddies outside the office firewall.
Accessing unauthorized web sites using the above tricks may be considered a violation of school or work policies and might put you in trouble. Use them at your own risk.
Related: How to Access Restricted Websites in School or Office
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/04/tricks-to-access-orkut-myspace-bebo.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Now that is an interesting application of CrossLoop :)
Written on 21/4/07 4:01 AM
Nice Info!
Quite useful ;)
Written on 21/4/07 8:31 PM
If you already have another machine outside the blocked network - you can set up a VNC server on it, and log onto it from anywhere. You can use a website like dyndns.com to assign a static web address for your dynamic IP. It even sends you a warning when your dynamic IP is about to expire.
Written on 21/4/07 10:37 PM
Its very good info for students. While studying their mind is on orkut, myspace..
So nice tricks...
Written on 22/4/07 6:25 AM
I am in a school in UAE where Myspace and Bebo.com or bebo.co.uk is banned through school filter. Will try mowser. Thanks.
Written on 22/4/07 11:30 AM
I'm sure if my users found this, they will very happy :)
Written on 23/4/07 1:17 PM
Hay thanks a lot for this tip...
Written on 29/4/07 12:35 AM
I am in Saudi Arabia and they have locked websites like Photobucket, Facebook, Bebo and Myspace.
Looking to unblock facebook and myspace since these sites have most of my US friends. None of the site unlocker software works.
Written on 1/5/07 9:53 AM
My school has websence!! ewwwww. now i cant get on bebo...any suggestions for websence? i heard it was impossible.
Written on 8/5/07 10:14 PM
Websense can be defeated by a php proxy. Doesn't last long though until it will get blocked.
Written on 9/5/07 10:37 AM
Hi, I am srinivas.I cannot login to the restricted sites such as orkut in my office using the above given tips.please help me
Written on 29/5/07 2:19 PM
I have an even easier suggestion that works for me
I am not sure if it will work in other countries but here in Australia all you have to do is open google
search for a site that has the "translate this Page" button nect to it
Take the name of the website you opened out of the URL bar and input your own website, simple
Like i said it may not work in other countries but it does work in Australia
Written on 30/6/07 6:37 PM
@Andrew
I used to be in a place that had websense, where both website names and their corresponding IP addresses were blocked. However was able to get limited access by converting the IP address to decimal, which websense (at the time) did not know about. This might have changed since, or if your school runs an old version it might still work. Note that if you surf away from the page you might hit websense blocks again unless you manually reconstruct the next address you want to get to.
To render www.myspace.com to a decimal address:
1) get its IP address (216.178.39.74), by pinging the name (if you have a direct internet connection) or if you only have access via a web proxy then find it out by using a networking website like www.network-tools.com
2) start your PC's calculator, and change it to scientific mode (using the "View" menu)
3) enter each of the four IP octets, one by one, converting them to binary (enter number and click on the "Bin" radio button)
Thus 216.178.39.74 becomes
216 = 11011000
178 = 10110010
39 = 00100111
74 = 01001010
Notice how any binary numbers less than 8 digits long have had leading zeroes added to pad them out.
Reassembled into IP address order, you get
11011000.10110010.00100111.01001010
4) Remove the dots, so you get one huge line of binary, thus: 11011000101100100010011101001010
5) Copy this binary string
6) Go to your scientific calculator, and hit the "Bin" button FIRST (as you are about to enter binary), THEN paste in the binary string.
7) Click on the "Dec" button on your calculator, and you will get the converted value of 3635554122
8) Add the hypertext protocol prefix and paste into your browser's address bar: http://3635554122
Voilà!
Written on 8/8/07 10:39 AM
Wuntoo: That works very well for connecting to most services (like ftp or ssh) if the web filter is stupid (and they usually are). However, a lot of webservers will have problems with the host string, also, since they are configured to serve different sites based on the host string.
My solution, which admittedly is a bit technical, is:
1) set up an ssh server at home (this can also be done using cygwin on Windows)
2) unblock port 22 from any firewalls and forward it on any routers
3) get an account on dyndns.org, no-ip.com, or another Dynamic DNS service, and get an updater client (this way you can remember your hostname instead of your public IP, which might change from time to time)
4) To surf the web, you just need to use your own computer as a proxy. Use ssh -D 1080 [user]@[hostname], or on Windows, use putty and set up dynamic forwarding in the GUI
5) Open your webbrowser with a socksifier. On Windows, use FreeCap, and on Linux, use ProxyChains.
The requests will all be routed through your home computer, so all your web activity will be unblockable by the restricted network. As an added bonus, admins can't snoop any of the traffic, since SSH uses encryption.
Written on 20/8/07 9:36 PM
I need some more help.
I'm trying to access www.photobucket.com at home because i live in a dictatorship. Now, i was able to see the site but i was not able to login, it said that i needed to unblock the cookies or something to that effect. you have any other sly things that will actually let me login and transfer some pictures?
thanks, it woudld mean alot.
here's my e-mail so some one could help me
squeekicooki24@msn.com
I'll take help from anyone.
Written on 30/9/07 3:45 AM
If it websites are blocked by a blocker app on the local computer, you might want to boot the computer off a linux liveCD which would bypass the blocker app.
Written on 4/10/07 10:29 PM