The Great Firewall of China has several different ways of blocking websites, so your website’s availability may change over time. If you have a front-page report about Tiananmen Square, you might find your website blocked, only to find it unblocked after the report vanishes from your front page. Another website might have had its DNS records tampered with or might see any connections ended by the firewall itself, no matter what the website’s current content is.

Great Firewall Of China

In spite of its name, the Great Firewall’s policies can be patchwork and inconsistently applied. Websites blocked in one region may not be blocked in another region. Great Firewall Of China is the quickest way to check your website’s availability at different locations in China.

Enter a website address and the service will send it to five different servers in China. Each server tries to access the website and shows a success or failure message.

It’s simple and quick, but this service has some drawbacks. You can only test homepages and not individual subpages. When I tried to specify a subpage on a website, I received an error message. The service also only checks if a website responds – the Great Firewall could re-route website requests to another web server and you’d be none the wiser.

WebsitePulse

WebsitePulse is useful because it lets you check specific subpages. The Great Firewall doesn’t only block websites, it also filters individual pages based on forbidden words and phrases in their URLs or content. WebsitePulse also offers different regions of China. Both Great Firewall Of China and WebsitePulse can test from Beijing, but the other locations are different.

Plug in a webpage address and you can see whether or not it’s accessible. WebsitePulse can only check one location in China at a time.

The English Wikipedia looks available. We’d get the same results if we tested it on Great Firewall Of China.

Further investigation reveals that some parts of the website are being blocked. Here, the Wikipedia page on the Great Firewall itself is inaccessible. Note how it says “Failure in Receiving Network Data” instead of providing a clear “Blocked” message. The Great Firewall does not inform users when it blocks a website; blocked requests just appear as network errors. The results from Seattle help clarify this – Wikipedia itself isn’t down; it just appears down in China when you access this page.

ViewDNS

ViewDNS checks for DNS poisoning. One tactic the Great Firewall uses is redirecting website addresses to other websites. For example, an Internet user in China might be redirected to Baidu, a search engine based in China, when they try to access Google. This subterfuge will show up as your website loading successfully in other tools. Another tactic is just changing a website’s DNS entry and pointing it nowhere – the website won’t load at all.

Enter an website’s address to see the expected IP address and whether it matches with the IP address returned from DNS servers in China. ViewDNS also tries to access the website in different regions and informs you whether or not it was successful.

Note how each different region points Facebook’s website to a different IP address — none of them load anything, but this prevents access to Facebook. It’s also interesting that the server in Inner Mongolia received a timeout rather than an incorrect IP address — is this because Facebook is being blocked differently in that region, or because of a legitimate network problem? That’s the thing about the Great Firewall: it’s hard to tell whether the firewall is interfering or whether there’s an actual network problem.

Bypassing The Great Firewall

Is your website blocked in China? You may be wondering how to unblock it. Unfortunately, there’s no appeal process. The most you can do is remove blacklisted words and content and hope that helps. There’s no official list of blacklisted content, either – Kafkaesque, isn’t it? The Great Firewall blocks by IP address, so multiple websites may be blocked if they share an IP address with a flagged website.

The good news is that the Great Firewall doesn’t block encrypted traffic. There’s no way to inspect encrypted traffic and businesses require encryption for security, so blocking it isn’t an option. This means that any foreign VPN service or proxy server can be used to bypass the great firewall. If you’re in China, you can tunnel out of the Great Firewall of China with a VPN or proxy server and access the full Internet.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The same can be said for offering employees access to Facebook. Interacting with users and customers in the online marketplace is almost a requirement for any business that wants to maintain a competitive advantage. What this means is that many companies are no longer blocking their employees from using Facebook during the workday. For the most part, employees aren’t really abusing the privilege. More and more workers these days are working from remote locations with a workday that is scattered all around the clock. People are combining work lives with personal lives.

At the same time, there is a subsection of employees that do abuse the privilege. This is to be expected, but it isn’t an impossible situation to remedy. In fact, it’s relatively easy if you just use a few creative firewall settings. In the example below, I’m going to show you how a small business utilizing a standard Linksys router can configure the router to block only Facebook games from network traffic. However, using the same principles, you can block Facebook games on your larger corporate network as well.

How To Block Facebook Games

There are multiple approaches you can take to block Facebook games. The first involves blocking specific Facebook applications that come from a specific vendor.  This is good because we love Facebook apps – as you can see from Steve’s review of great Facebook photo apps, and Michael and Eric’s review of FB apps that don’t suck.  There are a lot of productive apps out there.

So you may just want to block Facebook applications created by one vendor, such as the game maker Zynga for example. You’ll typically find the app creator listed at the bottom of most applications, such as the game Mafia Wars.

In most cases, traffic for these games comes from the domain of that creator. In the case of Zynga, you can easily block all Zynga apps by adding the keyword “Zynga” to the URL block list in your router.

Blocking Facebook Games By Keyword

For a Linksys router, you can find this setting by going to the Access Restrictions tab, and then selecting an Access Policy number that is blank. You can find blank ones by clicking on “Summary“.

Once you’ve selected a blank policy, just add the word “Zynga” (or whatever creator you’re blocking), to the section “Website Blocking by Keyword“. This policy will even block access to the creator website itself.

This won’t enable blocking across the board. You actually have to specifically tell the filter what PCs on the network you want to apply this policy to. You can do that by clicking on “Edit List” in the “Applied PCs” section.

Here, you can detail specific PCs that you want to apply the policy to by Mac Address or IP. In my case, I know the PCs on my small network range from 100 through 107, so I just put that IP address range in the “IP Address Range” section. Obviously, on a larger network you could specify all hundred or thousand PCs that you may have on your entire network. Or, if you want to block just a few PC’s, you can do that too.

Click Save Settings, and then also Save Settings back on the Internet Access Policy page. Now, try to access Zynga.com and see what happens.

Try to access any Zynga game, like Mafia Wars on Facebook, and see what happens.

However, you can still access Facebook and you can still access any other Facebook app. Obviously, not all Facebook apps are games, so some companies may want to still allow access to non-game apps. Blocking Zynga probably will block a majority of the games that are available on Facebook.  You could add other Facebook game makers to the block list if you wanted to.

Now, you may actually want to block all Facebook apps completely. That is also possible by using the URL address blocking that routers typically have available as well.

Block Facebook Games By Blocking Facebook Apps

To block all Facebook apps, just go back to the Internet Access Policy page on the router, and in the section “Website Blocking by URL Address“, you can add the base URL for all Facebook apps, which is “apps.facebook.com“.

This will not block all of Facebook, but instead only any pages that use the base URL apps.facebook.com, which all Facebook apps do. Now, you can see below that the app I could access before – The Sims Social – is now blocked by the new rule that I just added.

Whether or not you only want to block games, or if you want to block all Facebook apps, really comes down to the policy of your company or small business. Either way, this technique will provide access for the social networking benefit that Facebook offers to all businesses, while at the same time, blocking the time-wasting and addictive behaviors that Facebook apps tend to lead to.

Did this solution work for you? Do you know of any other creative ways to only block Facebook games or apps on your network? Share your own insights in the comments section below.

While there are certainly a large majority of users who simply would like to access a proxy sites in order to get access to blocked sites at their work or school, there are actually a number of other reasons that are a little more appropriate (and won’t get you fired). Sometimes, for whatever reason, people get banned from forums, or they other otherwise locked out of some form of online service based on their IP address. Using proxy sites makes it appear as though you’re a completely different person coming into the target web server from a different geographical location and IP.

Of course a proxy server will also fool your local firewall into thinking that you’re visiting one website, while that website actually redirects the traffic from a completely different website (the one you really wanted to go to) back to your computer. The problem with choosing a proxy and using it consistently is that eventually, one of the security experts identifies the server as a proxy site, and in very short order almost every firewall in the world gets reconfigured to block all traffic to and from that particular server.

The Never-Ending Game of Cat and Mouse

Since proxy sites come and go so quickly, hackers, simple Internet travelers and freedom of information activists now offer various services to the Internet community where they will constantly create new proxy servers just as fast as the old ones get blacklisted. Internet users who have a constant need for a proxy server simply sign up for the proxy server newsletter or email list, and they will receive a fresh new proxy server list in their email on a regular basis.

Since the general approach is based on email lists, there are other unscrupulous websites that seek to farm email addresses by building a “front” website which appears as a proxy list newsletter, while it is nothing of the sort. In order to respond to the overwhelming demand for these services, and to protect Internet travelers from these email-farming scam artists, I would like to present 4 legitimate and useful services that will email fresh, new lists of proxy servers to your email.

Many of the groups that provide the service of delivering proxies to your email use Yahoo Groups to organize those email lists. EverydayProxy is one of those Yahoo groups. Every day, you receive a list of fresh, working proxies drawn from the popular proxy provider Proxy.org. Signing up is a piece of cake, just send an email to the “subscribe” Yahoo Group email address.

Yet another popular proxy site is Yahoo Group is ProxInbox. This is actually a public group, which means that if you don’t really care to receive the proxies in your email inbox, then you can just visit this group website for the daily list of new and active proxies. I searched through the message history, and without fail the group administrators have delivered a list of proxies to the group web page every single day.

DDDay is another group email list, but in this case it’s powered by Google Groups. Signing up is as simple as entering your email address into the text field and clicking on “Join.” The list contents come from the popular “All For Proxy” Google group. You can unsubscribe by sending an email to the unsubscribe address, but when you start receiving the daily list of new and active proxies, you really won’t have any reason to unsubscribe!

Anonymode.info is another Google Group where you can quickly type in your email and immediately subscribe for the latest list of active proxy sites provided by the network. It appears that this list doesn’t get delivered every single day, but you are alerted whenever the proxy network  releases a new proxy.

Whether you decide to sign up for just one or several of the services, you can rest assured that you’ll never remain blocked from your favorite website or forum again. If a proxy that you’ve been using stops working for any reason, at least now you know that you have a place to go to get a new one that is active and working. It may be tedious, but at least it works!

Have you ever had the need to use proxy servers? Do you have your own favorite source for the latest proxy lists? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

The Internet is one of the favorite places to slack off from work. And most of the time people “intentionally” get confused on the difference between “slacking” and “working”, hence abusing the free net connection provided by the office/school/whatever.

So, to increase the productivity of everybody, the network admin is asked to block those major slacker-maker websites (social networking, chat, photo/video sharing, etc.). And since nobody has the guts to point his/her finger to the boss, the network admin will definitely play the role as the bad guy.

Unlock The Block

The problem is, there are always some ‘good’ sites that also get blocked in the process. And it’s very annoying if you really do want to work but unable to access the necessary places.

Assuming that you are going to use it for a good cause, there are many solutions available on how to get past blocked sites, and we’ve discussed some of them here, here, here and here. But you can’t get too many alternatives, can you?

This article will show you another way how to get past blocked sites. You’ll need your own domain hosted in a PHP-friendly hosting service and a script called PHProxy.

You can try to use a free web host for this purpose. The basic rule of thumb is, if the host can handle WordPress, it can easily handle PHProxy. However, not all free hosting providers (are willing to) support this script.

How to Get Past Blocked Sites

After you download PHProxy, unzip it, then upload these three files: index.php, index.inc.php, and style.css to a directory in your site. You can use any existing directory in your site, but it’s preferable to create a new one.

To upload files or create a directory, you can use any FTP client or use the online “File Manager” provided by your host. This is usually accessible via cPanel (and may have a different appearance depending on what kind of cPanel is used).

Inside the File Manager, choose “New dir”

And then create a new directory by writing down the desired directory’s name and click the checkmark.

Then choose the newly made directory to open it, and click the “Upload” button.

Browse for the three files and add to the upload list. Click the green checkmark to upload them.

And you are done.

Note: In some cases, you may have to create the new directory inside the “/htdocs” directory.

Using PHProxy

Using PHproxy to access blocked sites is very easy. All you’ve got to do is point your browser to: http://yourdomainname/the-new-directory-name/

If nothing goes wrong during the installation (read:uploading process), then you’ll see the following PHProxy display.

Just put the address of the blocked site in the “Web Address” field and click “Go“.

You can share the access to your friends if you want to, but it’s better if you just show them how to build one themselves. Because the more users there are, the more likely it’s being discovered by the admin.

To close, let me quote the disclaimer by the script’s author:

Since this script basically bypasses restrictions that were imposed on you, using it might be illegal in your country, school, office, or whatever. Even your host might not allow you to run it. Use it at your own risk. I will not be responsible for any damages done or any harm that might result from using this script.

Simply put, use the method at your own risk.

Again, PHProxy can be downloaded for free here. And there’s another similar script that you can try: CGIProxy.

Do you know other free and easy methods how to get past blocked sites?  Please share using the comments below.

Image credit: Joshua Rappeneker and Llima

Another reason for a website not working is that the website’s firewall may be preventing you from accessing it. If you are unsure what a firewall is and how it works, have a read of Wikipedia’s explanation and if you’re looking for a firewall recommendation, have a look to see what the MakeUseOf readers use.

If “Down For Everyone Or Just Me” says the site is down for just you, and you have asked your friends if they can access the site, which they can, here are a few tips on how to unblock a web page from behind a firewall.

1. Wait – And Wait Some More

After a certain amount of time (depending on the server’s configuration) the firewall may automatically unblock your IP address. This may take anywhere from one hour, to one week, or indefinitely. So if you are still waiting after a couple of days, continue reading this post as you might want to try another option.

But seriously, who would want to wait one week for Facebook’s firewall to unblock you?

2. Use A Proxy

So if a firewall is blocking you, you can use a proxy to see if you can access the website, because the firewall will most probably have blocked your IP address or an IP range. Have a read of my post How To Use a Fake IP Address & Mask Yourself Online for some proxies that you can use. If you managed to access the site, or at least view some of the homepage, you can say that your IP address was most likely blocked.  So to unblock yourself, you may want to try step three (but this won’t work for everyone).

3. Restart Your Modem

Restarting your modem will only work if you have a Dynamic IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). By restarting your modem, it will reconnect to your Internet connection and your ISP will assign you with a different IP address.

So if the firewall has blocked your IP address, by getting a new one, you should be unblocked from the website ““ unless of course that IP address is blocked as well. I should not have to explain how to restart your modem, but turning it off for 10 seconds and back on should do the trick.

4. Use Google Cache

If restarting your modem does not work, and you cannot access the site at all, you may want to use Google Cache. Google Cache is good for a site that does not get updated frequently, and you just want to view some information ““ for example doing some research.

Google Cache is basically a backup of the site that Google has archived ““ so you won’t be able to access Facebook properly with it. To access a cached website, simple do a Google search with site:domainname.com, then click on the cache link.

5. Try The IP Address Of The URL

Another thing you may want to try is to get the IP address of the website, and enter that into your web browser. To get the IP address of a website, visit the site SelfSEO and enter the website URL. You will then get the IP address of the website. Enter that number into a web browser to see if it works.

If you still can’t access a website, the problem may be at your end, so make sure your Internet is successfully connected and you can access other websites. But if you are positive that it is a firewall that is blocking you, the last resort is step 6.

6. Contact The Website Owner & Ask Them To Unblock You

If all else fails, contact the website owner. You may be able to find contact information by doing a WhoIs Search on the domain and looking through the results for their contact details. If it is a company’s website, you may be able to do a search on their company name to find their contact details and then ask them why you cannot access their website.

If you still can’t access the website, the following MUO articles may be able to help you out as well.

• How to Bypass Firewalls & Get into Blocked Websites in School or at Work with FreeProxy (Windows)
• How To Use a Fake IP Address & Mask Yourself Online
• Access Blocked Websites using Proxy Servers
• WebInMail: Access Blocked Websites via Email
• 5 Methods To Bypass Blocked Sites
• IsThisDown: Check If The Website Is Really Down
• AnonyMouse: Surf The Web Anonymously

Do you have any other tips on how to unblock a web page from behind a firewall?  If so, share it with us in the comments.

Image Credit : Wikipedia Commons

Part Two is all about locking down Internet Explorer so it can only connect to the Internet through the Privoxy server and thus only able to access the websites you want. Then, we’ll look at ways of securing that connection so that people can’t circumvent it so easily. I’ll be working with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) on my Windows XP Home computer. However, the principles should also apply to Vista and Internet Explorer 8. They do work on XP Pro and IE6 as well.

Step One: Force the Connection in IE7

Open up IE7 and look for the Tools button near the top right-hand side. Click on it, then on Internet Options.

The Internet Options window will open. Click on the  Connections tab. Once you are in the Connections area, you’ll see a button at the bottom of the window called LAN Settings. Go ahead and click on that.

The Local Area Network (LAN) Settings window opens. This is where we will set the IP address and port number so it only connects to Privoxy. When you get to this window, the check box labeled Use a proxy server for your LAN… will be unchecked. Put a check-mark in it. It should already be set to the correct IP address and port, which is 127.0.0.1 and port 8118. Click OK to return to the Connections window.

NOTE: If there is anything listed in the Dial-Up and Virtual Private Network setting box, simply select it, click on the Settings button and set it to use the proxy server, just like you did for the LAN. This is especially useful if your user can connect with a cellular card, satellite Internet, or dial-up connection. Do this for each connection listed.

Now IE7 will connect only through the Privoxy server and will only access the sites on your white list. Let’s do some things to keep it that way.

Step Three: Edit the Registry

You read that right, we’re editing the registry to prevent others from removing your settings from Internet Explorer. We are going there. As always, don’t go in the registry unless you feel confident, and always back up your registry before making changes. I think I have to say that by law. So now that’s over with, let’s move on.

Click on the Start button and then on the Run icon in the start menu.

The Run application will open. Type in the command regedit and click OK.

The Registry Editor will open. Time to make the backup! Click on File > Export.

Name the file with something meaningful. You could use today’s date so you know when the back up was made. Click Save to, well… Save it.

Let’s make some changes.

We’re going to do this through a .reg file that we can merge with the registry. Sounds crazy, but it works. To write a .reg file, open up Notepad.

Now, copy and paste the following lines in exactly as they read:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerControl Panel]
“ConnectionsTab”=dword:00000001
“Connection Settings”=dword:00000001
“Connection Wizard”=dword:00000001

By setting the dword value to 00000001, you are telling the registry that, yes, you want to restrict access to the Connections Tab, Connection Settings and the Connection Wizard.

Now that you have that in your Notepad file, you need to save it as a .reg file. I suggest saving the file to your Desktop for ease of finding when you are done. Here’s what you need to do when you save it: name the file something good like disable_connections.reg

Seriously, we’re almost done. Find the disable_connections.reg file you’ve just saved. Right-click on it and click Merge.

You’ll be asked if that’s what you really want to do. It’s up to you, but if you’ve come this far, you might as well commit. Click Yes.

The Registry Editor is kind enough to let you know that the merge is done. Why don’t we thank it by clicking OK? That’s nice, isn’t it?

Just to make sure it worked and I’m not lying to you, open up IE7, click on Tools > Internet Options. Look! No Connections tab!

Try going to a few sites that aren’t on your white list to test it. Then try going on a few sites that are on your white list. It should work.

I hope this tutorial has sparked some interest in using this to increase your information security. There’s much more that you can do with Privoxy and the registry to enforce compliance to your Internet Acceptable Use Policy.

Yes, there are ways around what I just showed you, such as using Portable Firefox, but that can be disabled in the registry too. But, as they say — that’s another story.

Let us know if this worked for you. Or if you know any other cool, free software ways to control Internet access. That’s what the comments are for!

Image credit: delboy74

I developed this system to deal with remote clients accessing non-work related websites via cellular-based Internet access. If your company has the means to implement a VPN, or to work with your service provider on a solution, that’s probably the best way to go. For small and medium sized business, this works just fine.

Part One: Implement Privoxy on Your Server

Privoxy is an open source proxy server that can help you control what your users connect to on the Internet. Since it is free for personal or corporate use, the documentation is somewhat limited, but that’s what this article is for. Go ahead and download Privoxy. I’m working on Windows XP, but this tutorial should be useful for other operating systems.

Step One: Install Privoxy

Once you have the Privoxy installer downloaded, find it and double-click on it to begin the installation.

First, you will see a screen with a warning. Read it carefully and click Next if it seems right to do so.

Next, you’ll encounter the Installation Options window, asking you what options you would like with your Privoxy. Want fries with that? By default, all three options are checked. There is no need to change them. Click Next, please.

Now, the Privoxy Setup will ask where you would like the program installed. I use the default location.

Once installed, you’ll see the final screen. Click OK, you know you want to.

That’s the installation part of setting up Privoxy. Now let’s move on to using Privoxy as a White List Proxy Server

Step Two: Configure Privoxy Server to Restrict Access To Websites You Trust

Yep, seems like a lot. Hang in there, sunshine. Once the installation is complete, Privoxy should open up a window that resembles Notepad more than a program. Click on Options > Edit Main Configuration.Now, Notepad will in fact open. It’ll be a configuration file in which you’ll need to change a few lines. The changes are simple to make, don’t panic. You can do it.

The first thing we need to change is the trustfile variable. Scroll down to 2.7. trustfile. Scroll down a little futher until you see the line #trustfile trust.txt. Just delete the pound sign (#) at the front of this line. Now save the document. We’ll come back to this in Step 3.

Now, look for the line that reads 4.1. listen-address. Scroll down a bit further from there and find listen-address  127.0.0.1:8118. That is your IP address and the port that Privoxy will listen for traffic on. If you are using this in your home, it’s probably best to leave it as it is. In the workplace, you want the IP address to be the static IP of your server. Once you have your IP address and port set, save the document.

Step 3: Set Up Your Trust List

To do this, you need to navigate to the trust.txt file. You’ll find that by opening your Start menu. Go to All Programs > Privoxy > Edit Config and click on Trust list. Yep, another Notepad file.

Look for the line that reads ~config.privoxy.org. This is where you start adding the sites you want whitelisted. If you put a tilde (~) in front of a domain name, Privoxy will allow access to only that domain. If you put a plus sign (+) in front of the domain, Privoxy will allow access to that domain as well as any domains to which that one refers.

Here’s a sample:

+guymcdowell.com will allow you to access guymcdowell.com and any sites linked to from it.
~makeuseof.com will allow you to access only makeuseof.com.

This can get tricky since some sites are dependent on subdomains to function. Hotmail is a good example of this. So, you may need to add few entries such as:
+*.hotmail.com – Allows you to access such things as mail.hotmail.com, blah.hotmail.com and more. How? Because the asterisk (*) is a wildcard character. Sneaky, huh?

So sit down and reflect upon what websites a person really needs to access to get their work done. Make a list and enter it in the trust.txt file accordingly. Remember to save the file as well.

That’s how you set up Privoxy as a whitelist proxy server. Stay tuned for Part Two where I show you how to force Internet Explorer to only use the Privoxy server as its gateway to the Internet, and make it very difficult to circumvent. We get into the registry! Super cool!

Are you totally confused or do you have any questions? Are you familiar with any better tool to restrict access to websites on your network or home PC? Go on and shoot them into the comments!

Image credit: delboy74

XeroBank

The xB Browser is a whole web browser based on FireFox portable. It routes you via the Tor network. The down side? The Tor Network can be a bit slow and unreliable, but for the most part it looks and works just like a regular FireFox portable installation. It deletes all traces after exit. XeroBank also offers a monthly plan for their private, faster network.

We covered XeroBank in more detail here.  [Windows]

UltraSurf

This has recently become my favorite software tool for bypassing blocked web sites. UltraSurf is seriously one of the best tools for the job. There is no install, so download the “exe” file onto a USB drive and run it whenever you need it.

When you open it up, it will open Internet Explorer with the UltraSurf homepage. From there the web is your oyster.

But why do I like it so much? First of all, it’s fast, it routes you through a possible three servers so you get highly reliable speeds. Second, it uses IE which is what you have if you’re on IT lockdown, so it doesn’t look suspicious and you don’t need to have two different browsers open at the same time. Also, since it uses your existing browser, things like Flash and Java will work like normal. Once you close UltraSurf it will erase your history and cookies. [Windows]

Remote Access

I wrote about remote access earlier, but it also works great for bypassing blocked sites. Simply log on to your home computer with LogMeIn’s Java viewer or whatever else you use and browse the internet from your own computer! It might lag a bit, but it works great! You can also use any software on your computer, too.

WebToMail

This one is interesting. If you have access to email, you have access to WebToMail. Just send an email to send@webtomail.co.cc with the URL as the subject and wait a few minutes and you’ll get an email with the web page. Unfortunately, it won’t work with sites that you need to login to, or websites with Flash or Java, but works with most other pages.

Bypass Firewalls using Proxies

There are literally thousands of proxy sites on the web. There are also sits that list proxy servers. Fact: 99.9% of them are blocked and the rest are going to be blocked by any decent filtering software. So you can host your own proxy with software like Glype proxy but for the most part they really don’t work too well.

These are some of the best ways to bypass websites that have been censored or blocked. But how do you bypass blocked websites?  Have I missed the best?  What do you think?