This posting is compiled from various sources such as from Freerk’ Article ( http://www.zensur.freerk.com) and is intended for beginners demonstrating in simple terms all you need to know to bypass internet censorship or to unblock sites
Whether you are connecting to the web from a country that imposes internet filters of sort or are seeking to circumvent pre-installed software on the computer you are using which prevents you from accessing existing public content on the Internet, the advice and information compiled in this guide will hopefully provide an insight into understanding how to unblock sites and bypass different forms of internet censorship and filtering.
Unblock Sites With Various Internet Circumventors?
Circumventors are any tools, software, or techniques used to unblock sites, bypass proxy server or bypass Internet filtering. These varries from sophisticated computer software to relatively simple manual steps, such as accessing a censored website stored on a search engine’s cache, rather than trying to access it directly.
Circumvention Providers install software on a computer in a non-filtered location and make connections to this computer accessible to those who access the Internet from a censored location. Circumvention providers can range from large commercial organizations offering circumvention services for a fee to individuals providing circumvention services for free.
There are a lot of circumvention techniques that can be used under a variety of different circumstances by a wide range of users. No single technology suits all of the different users and the circumstances within which they find themselves.
The motives for internet censorship range from intended desires to protect minors from inappropriate subject to autocratic efforts to command a state access to information. Regardless of what the censors’ grounds are, the consequence is the similar: They bar access to the internet pages they deem as unwanted.
Internet censorship Is not simply a parental or political instrument. There are a lot of software on the market that could restrict or block off access to particular Web sites. Most people recognize these computer program as Web filters. Censorship opponents have a different name for them: Censorware.
Whilst there are some vocal supporters and opponents of Internet censorship, it is not always easy to carve up everyone into one camp or another. Not everybody practices the aforementioned tactics to achieve goals. Some opponents of censorship dispute government policies in court.
1. Possible weaknesses
You are the one to choose to unblock sites or not and this posting only shows you how to do it, I can’t take any responsibility. In several censoring countries you will go to jail if they catch you, in a lot of companies you will get fired and some schools will ban you.
Of course the censors not only block Internet traffic, they are also looking at it (in countries/companies with a little Internet population) and try to find out who is bypassing their firewall how. An easy way to find out who (and how) is your internet is blocked or censored is by just looking for some identicators in the logfiles:
- Right after the Internet connection is established the user is connecting to only one server and remains connected to it all the time he’s online.
- What a user should do right after he gets an “access denied” message from his censor. (open a special website, go to a chatroom, connect to a special server…)
2. Caution!
It is possible that a censoring government run those proxies just to check who is accessing which blocked information. Maybe some of them are also maintained by hackers that can examine every piece of information that passes their servers (your credit card information, for example). So carefuly choose the server you connect to and even think twice if you use them to transfer private data. More infos: http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/list-of-possible-weaknesses.html
3. Different kinds of Internet censorship
There are many different ways to censor Internet traffic. Sometimes there are 2 or more combined.
3.1. Blocked URL’s via the DNS-server
This example is used by some German providers. It is a very cheap and easy censoring method and the same is true for bypassing it. Domain Name System is: Every computer on the Internet has an unique address, a little bit like a telephone number. These are 4 numbers from 0 to 255 separated with a dot. For example: 62.141.48.209 is the IP address for www.freerk.com. Because remembering such a number is very difficult, the DNS was invented. This service maps a URL to its IP address. I If the DNS-server from your provider is censoring, it just refuses to send you the real IP-address. He sends you nothing or a page from a “sorry” website.
3.2 Forced proxy server / transparent proxy
You have to specify a proxy server in your ‘Internet Explorer’ settings in order to get a connection to the Internet. Sometimes, the ISP is using a transparent proxy. With these you can’t see easily if there is a proxy or not. Every request you send to or receive from the Internet is checked at this server and redirected to you.
3.3 Keyword filter
This means that all Internet traffic goes through the servers of the censor, who is scanning the content for ‘bad words’. This dynamic filtering is particularly enforced in most filters in schools, libraries and companies. If the site contains bad words it is blocked. The person who is offering the blocked information could prevent the censoring by “hide” the content inside of images. For the user there is almost no difference, but it is difficult for a computer program to “read” the text inside an image. Also SSL encrypted traffic (a URL starting with https://…) can’t be scanned easily.
3.4 Blocked ports
Ports are like doors for a special service to a server or PC. They rank from 0 to 65535. The standard ports are from 0 to 1024, these are the well known ports. The official list you can get under http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers and a description on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_(computing). If a censor blocks a port, every traffic on this port is dropped, so its useless for you. Most censors blocks the ports 80, 1080, 3128 and 8080, because these are the common proxy ports. Because all of the proxies on common ports are useless for you, you have to find proxies that are listening on an uncommon port. These are very difficult to find.
You can easily test which ports are blocked on your connection. Just open the DOS-prompt, type telnet login.icq.com 80 and hit enter. The number is the port you want to test. If you get some weird symbols in return everything is ok, if it says “timeout” or something similar, that port is blocked by your ISP.
Here are the most important ports:
20+21 – FTP (file transfer)
22 – SSH (secure remote access)
23 – telnet (remote access) and also Wingates (special kind of proxies)
25 – SMTP (send email)
53 – DNS (resolves an URL to an IP)
80 – HTTP (normal web browsing) and also a proxy
110 – POP3 (receive email)
443 – SSL (secure HTTPS connections)
1080 – Socks proxy
3128 – Squid proxy
8000 – Junkbuster proxy
8080 – a proxy
3.5 Censorware on the client
Normally the censorship is implemented on servers from the ISP or government, but in some schools, private homes and some companies the blocking software is installed on every PC.
3.5.1 NetNanny
More info: http://www.netnanny.com/index.html
3.5.2 CyberSitter
More info: http://www.cybersitter.com
3.5.3 AOL Parental Control
More info: http://www.aol.com/info/parentcontrol.html
3.5.4 CyberPatrol
More info: http://www.cyberpatrol.com
3.5.5 SurfControl
More info: http://www.surfcontrol.com
3.6 Censorware on the server (inside of networks)
These are programs that are mostly installed on servers in schools, libraries, companies or countries with a little Internet population.
3.6.1 Bess/N2H2
Bess is a proxy filter that is often used in schools/universities and companies. It can easily bypassed with Webproxies.
More info: http://www.n2h2.com/products/bess_home.php
3.6.2 DansGuardian
It’s an Open Source Webfilter. Free for non-commercial use and thus it is widely used in universities, schools and libraries. It works as a Proxy with URL and keyword filtering (and also with the PICS-Standard). It’s often used on an IPCop machine, however, the author at DansGuardian doesn’t like it.
More Info: http://dansguardian.org/
3.6.3 WebSense
More Info: http://www.websense.com/
3.6.4 WebWasher
More Info: http://www.webwasher.com/
3.6.5 SmartFilter
More Info: http://www.securecomputing.com/index.cfm?skey=85
3.6.6 squidGuard
More Info: http://www.squidguard.org/
3.7 Whitelist
Most Internet filters works with a blacklist, which means that access to all sites is allowed, except some special sites (well, sometimes there are a lot of exceptions…). A whitelist works the other way around: Access to all sites is blocked, except some special ones. For a normal ISP it is almost impossible to offer – because the Internet is nearly worthless. The whitelist scheme is used by free Internet terminals that are sponsored by a company which allows users the free access to the ir e-commerce site. This filter scheme is the most difficult to circumvent.
Some time ago, there was a German ISP who had a completely free 0800-dial in number. Once you dialed in, you only could surf to amazon.de and about 10 more e-commerce sites. But you could also connect to the other customers of the ISP. So somebody with a flatrate connected to both his normal ISP and the 0800-free ISP and set up a proxy. So all the users of the free ISP could use that proxy to connect to other sites.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_list
3.8 IP blocking on the routers
4. Unblock Sites With Tunneling Software
4.1 Your Freedom
More info: See my tutorial, this application is great to bypass internet censorship Click the following link : Unblock Sites with Your Freedom for details
4.2 Using a Shell (SSH)
More info: See my tutorial, Click the following link: Surf The Web Anonymously With SSH Tunneling for details
4.3 Using Virtual Private Network VPN
More info: See my tutorial, Click the following link: Bypass Proxy Server With Virtual Private Network for details
4.4 JAP/ JONDO
JAP is an free and open source anonymity tool invented by a German university. It sends your traffic encrypted through different mixes, so that absolutely nobody, not even the owner of on of the mixes know who is accessing which site. This is also on of the best tools to circumvent censorship.
See my tutorial, Click the following link: Getting Around Firewalls and Unblocking Sites With JAP for details
4.5 Gpass
http://www.Gpass1.com. Click on the following link to find out more and learn the tutorial : bypass internet censorship with Gpass
4.6 UltraSurf
http://www.ultrareach.com Click on the following link to find out more and learn the tutorial : unblock websites with UltraSurf
4.7 Hopster
Hopster is a commercial tool to unblok blocked sites and firewalls in schools, companies e.t.c. The free version is only limited to a 4kb/s transfer rate (speed of a 56k modem). Just download the <1 MB Setup file and install it. It will test your connection/firewall and then configure everything automatically. Unlimited version costs 2 or 5 dollar a month.
More info: http://www.hopster.com/4.3.6 Wingates
……And Many More
5. Unblock Blocked Sites With Web-Based Circumventors and Public Proxies
Web-based circumvention systems are special web pages that allow users to submit a URL and have the web-based circumventor retrieve the requested web page. There is no connection between the user and the requested website as the circumventor transparently proxies the request allowing the user to access blocked websites seamlessly. You can find out web-based circumventor simply by typing “web-based” proxies in the search engine box one such example is Proxify.
Since the web addresses of public circumventors are widely known, most Internet filtering applications already have these services on their block lists, as do many countries that filter at the national level. Web-based circumvention systems could be a good choice for the users connecting with no trusted out of country contacts, assuming the pages are not yet blocked.
NOTE: Although some may advertise themselves as “anonymous” many web-based circumvention are not. Some may not even be encrypted. It is important to remember that encrypted websites begin with ” https” and are signified by the open lock icon in your web browser moving to the locked position. If you send your web requests unencrypted, they can be easily intercepted any step along the way of transmission, from your home or office router to your ISP.
One of the popular techniques to unblock sites or hide IP address and to surf anonymously is to utilize a proxy server which comes in one form or another. A proxy server is a server computer allow its users to make indirect network connections to other network services in this case the internet while hiding your online identities. The proxy provides the resource either by connecting to the designated server or by serving it from a cache. There are various implementations of proxy servers that you canuse to hide your IP address i to stay anonymous online. Click on the following link for details Hide IP Address With Proxy Servers
Just go through all this blog postings in the “anonymous surfing and tunneling” category to find out more and and learn various ways to unblock sites. [superemotions file="icon_mrgreen.gif" title="Green with Envy"]
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