How to bypass a school internet firewall

Schools can be really annoying. Specifically, they have a tendency to use programs such as St. Bernard or Barracuda to limit the freedom you can experience on the crowning communications achievement of the human race, aka the internet. That's what i intend to help you with. Over the next few pages, i will explain in detail many different methods which can be used to bypass and circumvent these programs. Enjoy!

Step 1Web Browsers

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The first step to internet freedom and privacy is a good web browser. This does not mean Internet Explorer, Microsoft's snitching piece of software that will tell your school administrators everything you do online. Nobody under 40 should voluntarily use it. Many people prefer Firefox, and i agree that it can be very useful. However, it can be slow and cumbersome, and is not always easy to configure. I always have preferred Opera. You can download it free at http://www.opera.com/download/ and it installs easily. It has a useful "Speed Dial" feature that allows you to effectively have 9 home pages. All of the step-by-steps in this instructable will be for opera, although it shouldn't be difficult for most people to figure out how to translate it to Firefox. Also, Google Chrome is now out, although it is very difficult to configure proxy applications in it. What I personally do is use Chrome for my legit browsing, and switch to Opera when i need to someplace that is blocked.

Just as a heads-up, Opera normally requires an administrator account to install, which yo probably do not have, if you are at school reading this. If you do, then your school is amazingly awesome, and leave me a comment, because i'd transfer in about 2 seconds. It is easy to get around this, however. The only reason that you normally need an administrator account is because Opera by default will try to install itself to the hard drive. You do not want this. Instead, when you are installing, chose the custom installation. It allows you to choose the installation path, and not install into the system. Change it to your desktop, or into your network folder, if you have one.

Step 2Proxy sites

Proxy sites, such as www.opencity.us have their advantages and disadvantages. Their advantages are that they are just as fast to use as the normal internet, so your browsing is not slowed down, and new ones are frequently made. However, they can steal your passwords when you log on, are frequently blocked by the overzealous school admin, and most importantly, do not encrypt their connections. This means that the school admin can cut-and-paste the url into their browser to see where you were. Busted. These will do in a pinch, and are useful to use for downloading proxy applications, but are usually a waste of time.

One can be necessary, however, to get at the proxy applications, which are usually blocked. Unfortunately, the firewall is continuously checking for oline proxies, so whichever ones i list here will probably be blocked by the time that you read this. Fortunately, there is an answer. if you can get to http://unblockedbebo.org/ or any other proxy run by the same guy, you can sign up for a newsletter which will let you know whenever a new site is posted. This system has saved me numerous times.

Step 3Https

This is a simple, if unreliable, method of tunneling. in your address bar, if you change the http:// to https://, the firewall will not be able to catch it. however, this does not always work, and can be annoying, because every time you click on a link you have to re-enter it. When using this, your browser will tell you that the security certificate is not trusted. Simply tell it to accept the certificate and continue anyway.

Step 4Proxy Applications

Ahh, my favorite part. This is where it gets easy to reliably slip past your school's blocks. The number one program for doing this is definitely Ultrasurf. You can download it free at www.ultrareach.com/download_en.htm

Now it's time to configure Opera. launch Opera, if you haven't already. Go to Tools, Preferences, Advanced, Network, and click on Proxy Servers. In the new window, check the first six boxes, and in the first column of text boxes type 127.0.0.1 and in the boxes labeled "port" type 9666. now, hit OK, and enjoy browsing freely.

There are several other proxy apps which also work, although through a different port. i'll list some here:
1. TOR the Onion Router
2. HTTP-Tunnel
3. Hopster

The setup for these is similar to Ultrasurf. if you have any problems, email me at TNT.M4v3r1cK@gmail.com and i'll be glad to help you.

Some people may prefer to use TOR. here are the setup instructions for it:

First, get a copy of Vidalia Bundle, and put it in your network folder. then, launch Vidalia. It will give you an error message(probably), so click Settings in the error box, and change the path for the TOR executable to point to the TOR application in your folder. Re-launch Vidalia, wait for it to successfully connect, then go back to Vidalia Bundle and launch Privoxy, and minimize it. Now, go to your web browser, and change the settings to point to Port 8118. That's it, you're done.

Note to people who go to my school:
the administration has blocked the programs themselves with the anti-virus software. I know how to get around this, but I am not going to post it here because i have reason to believe that the Administration at my school read this Instructable to find them. If you know who I am, come talk to me, if you're not so sure, but the programs seem to just not work.