A guide to when your ISP blocks Torrent websites

I created a website http://torrentse.net - and after about three days of running ibitzi, my ISP blocks me from my own website. So the good people at FS told me to use a proxy, so i did and viola, i can view my website again. Here a quick guide.

How to do it:
There are a few different types of anonymous proxies, (anonymous, high anonymous, and transparent). I searched the web trying to find proxys, theres many websites with browser based proxys, but the one i found out that worked the best is http://prokzee.net. It allows me to view my website AND run ibitzi with no problem. Just type my url into the form, select my options and im done. The only downside is that theres a prokzee.net bar at the top of my browser.
The other choice you got is to search google, find "anonymous proxy list". Once you find a list, it should have a bunch of i.p. addresses (usually just numbers) with ports. Find one that suits you and copy it. Next in Firefox (not sure how to do it I.E. or Netscape), open Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->Settings, then paste the information in the Manual Proxy Configuration field (make sure you take out the information after the : and put it into the port field, also take the : symbol). Click OK and your done. You should be browsing with a proxy. The only downside to this is almost every one i found was slow.

How it works:
Im not sure of the technicals, but from what ive understood, your computer sends a request to your ISPs server who then sends the information to the internet. But they can also block(blacklist) certain websites and make them unaccessible. When you use a proxy, you dont use your ISPs server, you use a anonymous server bypassing the ISP server.

Thats about as much as i understand about proxies, anybody else who may know more about this is free to correct/add to this.

A few web proxies:
http://www.hidemyass.com
http://www.prokzee.net
http://www.findproxy.org - A great website that lists ALOT of browser based proxies.

LOL

Not entirely... You need your ISP to access the Internet, so you can't bypass them entirely. What you do when you use a proxy, is you ask another server to make page/connection requests on your behalf and handle any responses and forward them on to you.

You see, your ISP blocks your access to certain pages by simply telling their servers to either ignore all requests for that sites IP number, or redirecting you to another page whenever you request the blocked site. Proxies get around this sort of blocking by very simply not being the site that your ISP has but the block on.... not by bypassing your ISP's servers.

See diagram:

 Proxy_revweb.gif ( 38.64K ) Number of downloads: 15


Of course, unless the proxy connection is encrypted, your ISP can still see what you're up to, by simply looking at the data transfer. The way to avoid this is to use a proxy server that allows encrypted VPN connections or SSL tunnels... When you do this, your ISP will not know what you're doing or which sites you are visiting. All they will know is that you are connected to server "A" and that "X" amount of encrypted data passed between you and that server.

BTW, it's only right to point out the downside to proxy servers.... Firstly, there will be a decrease in speed. This is especially true for free proxy servers, where the decrease in performance can make them unusable at times.

Secondly there can be an incompatibility with some Internet protocols... Some proxy servers for example absolutely forbid P2P or any kind of filesharing traffic, and actively block the protocols associated with them. Others (including some paid servers) don't block the protocols as such, but are set up in such a way that only local connections can be made (this is the equivalent of not having your ports forwarded) and will drastically reduce the performance of most P2P applications.

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there is the security issue.... Whenever you connect to most free proxy servers (other than an encrypted TOR node) the server owner will have access to everything that passes through his server. For example, log in to your hotmail account, and he will have, should he want it, access to your username and password. It goes without saying then, that when using proxy servers, you should never give out any personal data that you would not be happy throwing into the public domain... things like personal details, credit card numbers, paypal details, personal account log-in details etc are all things that you should absolutely avoid passing through proxy servers.

Remember the following as a rule of thumb... free proxy servers are a significant data mining threat, so be wary

Well said...

How to do it with Internet Explorer 6.0

1. On the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, click Internet Options, click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings.
2. Under Proxy server, click to select the Use a proxy server for your LAN check box.
3. In the Address box, type the IP address of the proxy server.
4. In the Port box, type the port number that is used by the proxy server for client connections (by default, 8080).
5. You can click to select the Bypass proxy server for local addresses check box if you do not want the proxy server computer to be used when you connect to a computer on the local network (this may speed up performance).
6. Click OK to close the LAN Settings dialog box.
7. Click OK again to close the Internet Options dialog box.
 

How to do it with Netscape Navigator 6

1. Select the 'Edit' menu.
2. Select 'Preferences'.
3. In the 'Category' window, double click on the word 'advanced'.
4. Click on the word 'Proxies'.
5. Select 'Manual proxy configuration'.
6. Type the server name and port into the 'http' boxes.
7. Click 'OK'

thanks, great information

Great info learned something today thanks guys......never knew they could see your personal data if they wanted to.

i guess I'll need it it one day.
thanks for info

I've been trying multiple ways to get around blocks, thanks for the easy guide. There are also programs like hide IP platinum(not so free) or Tor(free) which will do most of the work for you. Other than that, great guide that is useful for everyone.

thank you very useful info

Knew all of it already, but it's just, prokzee.net is down.

and

there are way better proxies.

hidemyass proxy doesn't even support flash or youtube. One of the greatest scripts to use for a proxy is glype. that will work with a lot of flash, not all, but most. Therefore, you should try looking for proxy sites with glype scripts.

What I am about to say applies to straight up web browsing and not p2p traffic.

Many ISP's are lazy and do not block sites by IP they assume you are using their DNS servers and block the url from resolving, this also blocks sites that have a dynamic host (IP changes but url stays the same).

I never use my ISP's DNS as there are uncensored and faster DNS servers available.

As a general rule you need to set what DNS IPs you wish to use on your local machine not on your router.

Thanks everyone for the info here - it's so easy to get bogged down with all these things - so thumbs up to everyone who has provided such clear instructions.

I haven't the time to remember and type up all the details, but one of the technologies ymf mentioned in passing is well worth following up: TOR, or The Onion Router. Like the name suggests, it masks your activity online by passing each chunk of data from node to node, like the layers of an onion. As not even the nodes it passes through know who, ultimately, requested it, or which chunck of data goes with which, it's impossible to track. Combined with a lcoal proxy like Privoxy, you can hide pretty much any other details your ISP may be using to track your web use, and protect against a host of other threats.

No offence Mojo, but I'm not sure why anyone would use IE, or Netscape (the mention of which makes me think I'm still in my twenties), if they're serious about controlling and protecting their net use. On Firefox though, you can easily manage your proxies using FoxyProxy.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that while all of these tools will protect your websurfing and other low bandwidth applications, they won't yet protect you while you use BT: if you try and run BT over TOR, you'll not just slow your own transfers down massively, you'll damage TOR for every other user. However, there's new apps on the horizon that will share torrent listings, trackers, and content reviews/descriptions over the BT network itself (based on technology currently being developed by the EU, no less, but which I cannot remember the name of right now). When that happens, we should all be able to play happily with no fear of anyone watching what we're doing, and The Man will have no single 'choke point' that he can use to close the network down.

This is very interesting info. Thanks very much for posting about it. If you should happen to remember the name of this new technology, please let us know.

Just spent some time googling - is this what you are talking about?

http://thenextweb.org/2008/07/20/torrent-l...nted-in-the-eu/

http://torrentfreak.com/eu-invests-22-mill...torrent-client/




This post has been edited by sg1efc: Aug 18 2008, 02:33 PM