Employers, government agencies, and libraries are increasingly using Websense and other internet filters to block access to certain websites. While these filters can cut down on the exposure to viruses, help thwart hacking attempts, and possibly increase employee productivity they can also prevent access to a variety of popular websites. Fortunately, bypassing Websense is surprisingly easy.
Employers, government agencies, and libraries are increasingly using Websense and other internet filters to block access to certain websites. While these filters can cut down on the exposure to viruses, help thwart hacking attempts, and possibly increase employee productivity they can also prevent access to a variety of popular websites. Fortunately, bypassing Websense is surprisingly easy.
Find a proxy or circumvention site. Sites such as https://www.bypassr.com offer a way to bypass Websense by, for example, using a secure connection (note that the url begins with "https," not "http"). You can access the circumventor or proxy site, and then access blocked sites through that.
Type the url you want to go to in the box on the site. Once you access the proxy site, enter the address of the site you want to go to in the box on the screen.
Turn your home computer into a circumventor. Since proxy sites are constantly being blocked, you may want to create your own.
Install a circumventor program. At Peacefire.org you can download a circumventor program on your home computer so that you can access blocked sites at other locations by connecting to your home computer. Download a couple programs, and run the setup, and the program will give you a url you can use to access it from anywhere. Write down this url and carry it with you. Note: you don't download the programs onto the computer with the filter--you download them onto another computer that you can connect to from the filtered computer.
Enter the url for your home computer in the web browser on the filtered computer. When you're at a computer with a filtered connection (at work or at the library, for instance), simply enter the circumventor program gave you, and you will be able to access blocked sites via your home computer. Note that this will only work if your home computer is on and connected to the internet.
More Tips
Go to Peacefire.org to get on the mailing list for new proxy avoidance sites. People who update Websense and other filters are also on the mailing list, of course, but you should be able to use a new proxy for at least a couple days before it's blocked and you need to get a new one.
The way this works is that the proxy avoidance site is hosted on a non-filtered connection. The page is routed through that connection to your computer.
If you just want to read the text, type the site's url into the Google search box and when the list of results comes, click on the "cached" link.
The sites referred to above are just two of many such sites available on the internet. You can search for more if you can't get those to work.
The proxy site may have options to block cookies, scripts, etc. You may have trouble accessing or displaying many sites if you have all of these blocks enabled, especially for scripts.
Websense can also be circumvented by using AOLOpenRide software. You'll need an AOL/AIM screen name and log in, but the OpenRide browser bypasses the WebSense filters.
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