If you happen to sit behind a Company Firewall, or you have a restrictive ISP on your hands; you are probably having problems trying to use MSN, Live, Facebook, Tweeter etc. This is of course very annoying at best – tho I can see why companies see the need to restrict what kind of Internet activity their employees can access while at work. Not every site out there is what I would call “Work Safe”.

That being said – sometimes you may find yourself in the situation where you are doing work related research – and end up at restricted sites – what then? Okay, I know that one is a bit far-fetched, you would probably just want to be able to use your Facebook or Tweeter or whatever. So Being the nice guy that I am – here are Three ways to breach security…

Anonymous Surfing – Proxy Wise

There are literally hundreds or even thousands of free proxies offering to hide you from your ISP or Company Firewall. Some are fake (of course), some place large ads on your screen so you can’t even read the page you are looking for, and some are in fact very good. Some Company Firewalls not only block sites from content or URLs, but also based on the language or country – so you might need to try a few.

The following list are favorites:

• hidemyass.com
• can’t bust me
• anonr.com

What is a Proxy, anyways ?

A Proxy is a server that fetch the information you want, but without revealing your true identity or location. Think of it as a two-way mirror, the person standing in a dark room, on one side of it, can see the person in the other room (Where the lights are on), but not the other way around. Therefor your ISP or Company Firewall can only see the Proxy Site you are surfing to, but not the site you are actually viewing.

All the free Proxies are filled with ads and it may be difficult to see how to use it. However, If you look closely you will find a text field with a prefilled URL, like http://www.youtube.com (or similar). Delete that text and enter your desired URL.

Some Proxies also offer settings that let you block such things as cookies, JavaScript etc. that actually might tell your ISP and Company Firewall what you are really up to.

You can find more at sites like this one:http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html. This site provides a list of hundreds of free proxies and in which country they reside.

WebPage as PDF

If you are not in a hurry, this is also a nice way to fool your Firewall and ISP. Create a PDF of any URL and have it sent to you by Email or as a PDF Download. I have previously written about two solutions, html-to-pdf and PrimoOnline (By NitroPDF) (Read here).

Which of them You use, depends on how restrictive your environment is. If you cannot download anything from an external URL, you should use the Email Solution.

Granted, it is not the most effective way of surfing the net, but as we say here in Norway: “Distress, teaches the naked woman to spin yarn“. Yes, I do Know the English saying: “Distress is the mother of invention“, but I like the Norwegian version better. . .

How do you do It ?

1. Open the URL (Html2PDF | PrimoOnline)
2. Type in the URL of choice and Email Address if applicable
3. and Enjoy

Remote desktop

This is probably the sneakiest of them all. Set up a VPN or a Remote Desktop to your Home Computer. That way you may use your home based Computer and Internet as your own personal Proxy. This may sometimes require some permission settings from the Network Administrator, tho I don’t foresee that as being much of a problem. After all, you do work from home on occasion don’t you ??

I recommend the Free Service from www.logMeIn.com, because I have tested it and I know that it works. It is also a well-known Service and most network administrators should have no issues with you using it. If you need to download files using this method, you can email the files from your home Email to your Office.