How To Get YouTube When It's Blocked

Many schools and businesses use a firewall to block access to YouTube, making it difficult (but not impossible) to access

If your school or office firewall blocks access to YouTube you may be able to use a proxy service to get get around the firewalls 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 every 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 You-Tube 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, Proxies, 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 and proxies to access YouTube and other websites at school or work that are blocked by a firewall. 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 or proxies 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 YouTube.com 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 or proxy, so the firewall only sees the connection from you to them. The anonymizer's computers then connect to YouTube.com (or Hotmail, Myspace, 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 proxy's web address and not Youtube.com.

Some schools block proxys and anonymous web surfing sites, especially the free ones, so you may have to try a few to find one that works

The I.T. guys at your school or in your company's I.T. Department might be smart enough to configure their firewall to block the common proxys and private web-surfing websites and services right along with blocking YouTube.com. Lucky for you, there are LOTS of different internet-proxy and anonymizer services to choose from! You may have to experiment with different proxies until you find one that works with the firewall settings at your school or in your office at work.

There are no guarantees when they block YouTube.com

You might only have to try one or two different anonyimizers or web-proxy services before you can connect to YouTube.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 place of employment. If using proxies is against the rules, use them at your own risk or don't use them at all!

Related links:
How to Save YouTube videos on your computer.