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How to Unblock web sites like Myspace.com and Facebook.com |
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So you have found out that your company or your college has now begun blocking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com. You really can't be disconnected from your friends for the entire time you're at work. While unblocking sites can be quite a pain since you have to know what method your company is using to actually block the sites themselves. Some of the simplest ways that companies block sites is to modify the settings on your local machine the more advanced method of blocking sites using systems that are located on the network of the company or college. We can use a number of different test methods to unblock sites.
Okay, so the simplest method that some companies use to block websites is by modifying the hosts file on your local machine. To find websites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com your machine has to convert the English domain name into a name that the computer understands. The computer uses numbers to locate resources on the Internet which are called IP addresses or Internet protocol addresses. Your computer uses two different methods for locating the IP addresses of resources. The first is the hosts file on your local computer and the second is a DNS server that is usually provided by your company or ISP. If you're at a smaller company or at a smaller college one of the simplest ways for them to block access to MySpace.com or Facebook.com is to edit the hosts file and put in proper addresses inside of it. If they are using this method you can unblock MySpace.com or Facebook.com by editing the text file located at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Just open this file with any text editor and if you see any lines that say Facebook.com or MySpace.com just delete them to quickly unblock the sites. But the file was doing was directing the domains of those friends sites usually to an Internet address that doesn't work or your local machine. Now if the system administrator for the network scanning those close files they will know that you unblock those websites.
Now the second harder method is they could be using an Internet proxy that blocks those specific websites like MySpace.com and Facebook account. Some network administrators are lazy and though they may force you to use a proxy inside of the network they may not block you from using a different proxy or just from removing it. This is honestly a bit of a chance since you really need a dumb system administrator for this to work. To check to see if they're using a proxy to block sites and you are using Internet Explorer click on tools and Internet options then connections then LAN settings. If there's anything in there you should clear it. Also if you see the check mark next to automatically detect settings feature you should unclick that as well.
Now try surfing the Internet again. See if the sites that you want to visit are unblocked. If they are then congratulations you had it easy. If they aren't we can try another option. Go on the Internet and do a search for free proxy servers. You can usually find a list of proxy servers that you can now put into the field that says use proxy server for connections. Now try surfing the block sites again. If that worked and you had it a bit harder but not very hard at all. One note on the security side, when using free proxy servers to unblock websites like Facebook, MySpace.com you need to know that sometimes these proxy servers are set up so they can sniff your usernames and passwords. Make sure that you only use secure SSL connections when sending usernames and passwords across these free proxy servers.
One easy option that you can do if the above didn't work is to look up website proxy scripts. These are websites that allow you to bounce through them to access restricted websites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com. Unfortunately if your company or college is using Web protection software like websites many of these sites might be blocked. But usually the smaller sites are not since but since probably has not added them to the directories. Usually what I do is do a search for website proxy scripts and then click on the last result in Google and then try each one after that. Usually I find a website that isn't blocked by websites that I can use it to unblock MySpace.com or Facebook.com. One thing to remember is if you have too many of these searches your system administrator might review the logs and see it.
The final and most geeky option to use to unblock websites like Facebook, MySpace.com is to use X. windows forwarding over and SSH tunnel. You need to have a Linux box at home that has a static IP or you can use the DNS forwarding service so that you can connect back to it. You must have this SSH server running on it and allowing X. windows forwarding. Then get yourself a copy of X. windows and an SSH client. You can then spawn a Firefox browser is actually running on your home PC on your work PC across an encrypted pipe that your system administrators will not be able to see. This will completely on block any websites that they might block. This is an option that most standard users will not be able to do that if you take the time to look up how to do it it is probably the best answer for you to unblock websites on your work or college network. Have fun and happy browsing.
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