Monday, February 20, 2006

Running Around Proxy Servers.

Michelle Malkin reports
A number of readers overseas have e-mailed that my blog is now inaccessible in the United Arab Emirates. B. writes:...
Source: Michelle Malkin - BANNED IN THE UAE
Well, there is a fairly simple way to do an end run around proxy servers, it works well especially when you want to access banned text rich sites such as Michelle's website.

You will need a bit of technical expertise but not too much.

First
Surf the net and subscribe to an ISP in a liberated nation. You will probably want to find a service near your home but if you are a resident of the oppressive nation just find an ISP in a nation that does not censor. The remote ISP must also allow shell access and have some sort of text based web browser you can run when logged on.

Subscribe to that ISP then you have an ISP account in two places. The ISP you use to normally access the Internet and surf and a remote account.

Second
Fire up Telnet. What is Telnet? Telnet is a program you use to connect and interact with remote computers. Every Windows system I have worked with has a version of Telnet. Bring up the start menu, select run, and then in the entry box type telnet myisp.com,where myisp.com is the address of the remote ISP you subscribed to in step 1 above, and click okay. A telnet client will appear and should connect to your remote ISP. This may take a bit of time.

Third
You will be asked to provide your username and your password. Type them in.

Fourth
Now, type "lynx" (or whatever the name of the text based web browser is) and lynx should appear. To go to Michelle's website type the command g and then the website you want to visit: http://www.michellemalkin.com/ and then Lynx will go and fetch the requested page (in this case Michelle's front page).

Yes, you will not have access to the fancy graphics but you can't get them the normal way. If you really need to see a picture Lynx gives you the ability to download it and then you can use another internet protocol named FTP to transfer that image from the remote server to your local machine to view it.

Complicated? Sorta, but if you really want to read banned websites from nations that censor said websites learn it.

Update:
  1. 7:51 pm CST 2/20/2006.

  2. Welcome PJ Media readers. Here is a link to the whole blog, please check it out! Thanks for stopping by!
  3. 7:10 am CST 3/12/2006.

  4. An anonymous commentator informs us:
    Hi,

    on a side note: If you are confronted with a system "spying" on your internet use, the telnet program should not be your first choice.

    With telnet your login information (username and password) are transmitted in plain through the network - ready for everyone "in between" to read. So is the very content you are accessing. Although the privacy part might not be interesting to you, the nasty things someone can do with your account will be.

    If supported by the ISP you should use a SSH connection, although this requires additional software on windows computers (try a search for PuTTY). This gives you a secure channel for communication as everything is encrypted.
    Source: Comment on Running Around Proxy Servers

    Good point, go out and find PuTTY for your Windows system. If you run linux you already have a SSH client. I have seen it myself, with telnet your ID & password are sent unencrypted and easy for spyware to intercept and read. Thanks for the tip/reminder Anonymous!
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