Access Blocked Websites [How to]

Access Blocked Websites - This article will guide you through easy-to-follow steps that will help you access blocked websites.

Schools, colleges and corporate establishments are known the world over for blocking their employees or students from accessing various websites on the internet. Social networking sites like Orkut, Hi5, Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter are commonly blocked. Other popular sites that get blocked include Youtube. Fortunately there are various to get around this and access blocked websites.

Use IP address instead of the URL

Depending on the application/software used, blocked sites are sometimes stored as a bunch of URLs, for example, www.download.com, www.yahoo.com, www.googlemail.com, etc. Typing the IP instead of the URL will usually bypass this simple block. To get the IP address of a domain, you can ping domain.com in a command prompt on a local computer, which will return the IP address.

Redirecting with Short URL services

The URL you intend to visit may be banned, but you can convert them to shorter URL with some special services called short URL services. Using these short URLs may allow you to circumvent the ban. MooURL and SnipURL are two examples of such services.

Google Cache

Search engines such as Yahoo and Google cache webpages and store them. In most cases, these cached pages are also added to the blocked list. If they are not, then clicking on the cache will let you see a cached version of the page.

Internet Archive – the Wayback machine

An Internet service called the Wayback Machine can assist when trying to access blocked websites. It periodically caches copies of nearly all websites on the net, almost from the date they were started. Although the latest copy of the site may not be with Wayback, but what they have should be good enough for getting around the blocked site.

Surfing Anonymously

Several sites allow you to use their proxy or domain and permit you to surf other sites anonymously. Countless numbers of proxy websites exist that can help you access the blocked websites. Some of such proxy sites are here.

Using Proxies

You can insert proxies in your web browser from the tons of sites that distribute free proxies of most of the countries.

For proxy surfing with Firefox, go to the Advanced tab, choose Network tab and click within Connection Settings. Choose the Manual proxy configuration, and put your proxy below HTTP proxy.

For proxy surfing with the Internet Explorer, go to Tools, then to Internet Options and select the Connections tab. After clicking into LAN settings, check mark the Proxy Server. You can insert the proxy URL within Address.

Using Translation Services

Online services for translation will allow you to translate a website from one language to another. For example, Google Translate or AltaVista BabelFish displays the translated result on their own web page. All you have to do is enter the URL of the website you want to access and retranslate it. You really do not want the translation, but this allows AltaVista or Google to fetch you the page.

RSS Feed subscriptions

Not all sites may be accessed this way, but if the intended site provides RSS feeds, you may subscribe to it. You can either read it through an RSS reader or receive the feed regularly and directly into your email.

Email retrieval of web pages

You can subscribe to Web2Mail, which is a free service. If you send them an email to www@web2mail.com, giving them the URL of the website, they will send you the web page as an email.

By following these simple steps you will more than likely be able to access blocked websites.