Many schools and businesses use a firewall to block access to websites like Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, MSN Spaces, Hotmail, Yahoo email, and other email sites, making it difficult (but not impossible) to access them.
If your school or office firewall has blocked Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Gmail, or Yahoo email you may be able to use a few internet privacy tricks get get around the firewall and access any website you want.
The easy way: Try Firefox to get around the firewall
Firefox is not affected by many network restrictions that system administrators may automatically apply to Internet Explorer each time you use it. More importantly, Firefox has built-in proxy-connection settings, which when used with settings that you can get from an anonymous web surfing or anonymizer service, can allow you to get to virtually any website you want even if it is blocked by a firewall. Firefox has several other features such as Google-integration for faster searches, automatic pop-up blockers and more. Firefox is free.
Get to Facebook from work or school, even through a firewall by using an Anonymizer or Private web surfing site
For years internet privacy experts have been using anonymizers, private web-surfing services and other identity hiding software or services to get to websites privately.
These anonymizers and Anonymous web surfing services are usually used to hide your tracks while surfing the internet, making it impossible for anyone to trace what web-pages you have visited - but you can also use anonymizers to access Facebook or other websites at school or work blocked by firewalls. These anonymous web surfing services when used together with Firefox will usually let you get around any firewall.
Most web-proxy services or anonymizers are not free, but many do offer partial service for free or a free trial period, which might work for you depending on what type of firewall your school uses.
You may have to try a few different internet anonymous web surfing services to see which one works best with the firewall that your school or office has. Most of these services do not require you to install any software on the computer you're using at. You simply log into their website from work or school, then use the service to get to Myspace or whatever websites your school or business firewall is blocking. You can use these services with or without Firefox.
How an anonymizer gets around a firewall
An anonymizer or Private web-surfing service gets around your school's firewall by setting up a connection between your computer and the anonymizer service, so the firewall only sees the connection from you to them. The anonymizer's computers then connect to Facebook (or Hotmail, Friendster, Hi5, etc) with their internet connection and send the data back to you. To the school's firewall it looks like your computer is connecting to the anonymizer's web address and not Facebook.com (or whatever website you're trying to get to).
Some schools block anonymizers and anonymous web surfing sites, especially the free ones, so you may have to try a few different ones to find one that works
The I.T. guys at your school might be smart enough to configure their firewall to block the common anonymizer and private web-surfing websites and services right along with blocking Facebook. Lucky for you, there are LOTS of different internet-privacy and anonymizer services to choose from! Just keep trying different ones until you find one that works with the firewall settings at your school.
There are no guarantees
You might only have to try one or two different anonyimizers or web-proxy services before you can connect to Facebook.com from school. You might also try 50 and never find one that works if your school's firewall is really good. The only way to find it is to try. WARNING: The use of web-proxies or anonymizers to bypass firewalls might be against the rules at your school or work. If anonymizers are against the rules, use them at your own risk or don't use them at all!




Comments
If my work can read what we send over the internet (like personal mail) doesn't that mean they have a remote key logger? If they do, will they be able to see that I have gone on myspace using firefox?
Ill tell ya this right now, keyloggers are illegal, no school/company should run one
they will monitor everything you do, its why theres a server full of users, It stored every website that you have been to (much like the computers at your house) the only way they could get your password would be if the url had it in it (Ex. login.php?username=nick&password=sinlore)
Whatever gets stored on your computer, will be stored on the server
To get around the school safty nets, you could gain administrator control (google yourself, I cant explain it on here) or get a hold of a teachers account, they have almost no restrictions either. Other then that proxies are one of the other ways.
The software the schools use look for meta tags (some websites are actually blocked by the url) if you can find a way to clear the websites metatags then you can clearly get to the website (some common sense and html coding and you'll get through). Hacking is gaining access to something that you ordinary cant. If you get caught doing this, they will ban you from all the computers in your school, then rip up the contract you signed at the beginning of the year.
I never kept my computer privileges for more then a month at any school I went to
If you guys want to know why the proxie sites you used to go to is blocked by the school, is because people cant keep there mouths shut, they either tell a teacher or a student about it, someone gets caught, and then they block the url.
Ill tell ya this right now, keyloggers are illegal, no school/company should run one
Your statement, in this context, is not 100% correct.
Keyloggers are perfectly legal to put on a computer that you own. Any company or school would be perfectly within their rights to log every keystroke you type on THEIR asset that THEY own and allow you the privilege to use.
To answer the question though, NO, they would not necessarily need a keylogger to read what you send over the internet (email, webpages visited) - this can be accomplished a variety of ways on the server (email server, or internet proxy), the internet firewall/router, etc. Most large companies do have some sort of filtering/logging to protect themselves (from employees doing stoopit things) so you should always assume that every email you type and every webpage you visit IS being reviewed.
Correct me if I'm wrong please, I thought they had to warn you about it, to not get sued
Generally a company will give some sort of blanket statement like "every move you make, every breath you take, is monitored, so don't do anything stupid" - but it is not required.. at least in my state two or three years ago when i setup the monitoring systems where I work, it wasn't.
I didn't know that, one of the Defcon 15 speakers said it was illegal to run one on a company or schools computer
Well he is right - it is illegal for YOU or for HIM to run on on the company or school's computers.
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look chances are they are have any emails being sent out going through the sever administrator or something allowing them to see what emails you have looked at and sent, not many people use a keylogger to see what you've been doing it would take to long. hope that helps
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well using a proxi and firefox worked for one day, then they blocked the proxi !
i guess i'll try a different one tomorrow lol!
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what if i cant download firefox? they block downloads too
Get a Sandisk U3 drive....looks like a normal usb thumb drive but does so much more. Firefox for U3 drive can be installed on it and run from the stick. So can a lot of other handy programs and games. Seriously, mine has been a godsend. And 16 Gb storage for under $50 has been useful too!
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so... i have the sandisk U3 and just add firefox to it and I can get in to facebook at my school? is that all??
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bring in firefox on a disk or floppy drive and execute it from there.
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Than bro you rlly helped me out!