Posted: 4/15/2009 12:48:44 AM EDT
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I have to use a Proxy from home as Virgin Media seems to have a problem with AR15.com and I'm yet to be arsed to try their technical support.
Currently using "Hide my Ass" - It all works fine except for private messages, which is a bit of a pain. Anyone found a proxy that works with PMs? At the mo the only place I can check them is an office that I only visit once a week. Cheers 
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Spookily enough I use Virgin Media as my ISP and on my desktop, where I am now, I have 100% functionality. However, through my laptop I can't access it at all using IE and have to use proxy sites, even though it's through the same modem and router (I think this is more to do with my laptop security settings but we've already done this to death and I just cope with it on part functionality, basically read and post text only). I found 'Proxalise.com" worked best for a while and I had full functionality but it seems to have died and now I cast around whenever I access via the laptop......I did lose it altogether a couple of years back and threatened to change my ISP before they pulled their finger out and talked me through some setting changes
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You might want to take a look at TOR which is an open source (i.e. free) peer-to-peer distributed proxy network which has grown hugely in popularity over the past few months.
To use it on Windows you will need to install a few components (all of which are in the single WIndows installer, so no complicate setup). If you use Firefox as your browser, there is even a 'Tor Button' which enables/ disables the proxy settings for you.. for IE users, you will need to set the proxy manually as with others. Although TOR is a community project, performance is pretty good (certainly for regular browsing), because of the number of people running relays.. from a security perspective, its very robust.. actually, I understand it is much hated by the PTB because it presents them with real problems tracking who is doing what (defeats Phorm type deep-packet-inspection for example). Unless you business is of interest to the NSA, you'll probably be fine! You can read more about this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing |
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Sure..I'll try
A proxy is simply another computer connected to the network (in this instance the Internet) through which you direct your network traffic (in Windows you do this by setting the IP address of the proxy in 'Proxy Settings' which you can find from Internet Explorer under > Tools>Internet Options) oh, the IP address by the way is the unique numerical address that each machine connected to the network must have). By directing you traffic via a proxy, you are effectively hiding your own IP address from any sites you connect to through the proxy (the sites you visit will just see the IP address of the proxy, which is then relaying back the traffic to you). In the case of ISPs, or network admins (at work for instance) blocking access to some sites, proxies can often help because you are connecting to the destination via the proxy (so the ISP or network admin's controls only see the address of the proxy, not the banned site). I would just point out that this is a super-simple explanation..the ways in which your browsing/ internet access can be monitored/ restricted in practice can and often will be very much more sophisticated than just looking at the destination address and blocking that.. in particular, a technique called "Deep Packet Inspection" which actually looks into the data you are requesting -looking for banned keyword for example. If you really want to spook yourself (get that tin foil hat out) check out what we in conjunction with the Americans and Aussies have in place by way of the Echelon system. There are ways around all of these however (Echelon included!)...encryption, peer-to-peer routing (Tor in my above post) and lots of other possibilities can be used to overcome almost anything...actually, that's kinda the point that is always missed by the public when the powers that be/tabloids get on their soap boxes about banning this or that online service... it really is a loosing battle.. you can't shut it down..the open nature of the network (which is the great thing about it) means that traffic can always be encrypted and re-routed to circumvent.. |