Why Can’t I See That Website?
If you’ve been online for longer than a few days, you’ve probably had your access to a web site blocked at some point. Take for instance your internet feed at work or college, ever had an automated message telling you that you are denied access to a website. It’s becoming much more common for obvious reasons and of course one of the main ones is time wasting. There have been numerous studies on the amount of time people waste on internet shopping or social networking sites and you can’t really blame your employer for trying to curb this to some extent.
Of course the ‘grown up’ way to stop employees wasting time on the internet, is to have some sort of sensible poilcy or agreement with staff or students. An internet policy that allows people to use the net in their lunch breaks or after work is by far the most effective way to regulate internet access. But of course we’re not all ‘grown up’ so the use of sophisticated internet filters are becoming increasingly common.
Now some of the restrictions have been around for years but in the past it was quite easy to bypass. The restrictions were just a list of blocked web sites and when you tried to access them the company proxy would block them. Ironically these were easily bypassed by using a proxy on the internet to relay your requests. Alas this won’t work with the modern systems which actually look inside the data request, so those quick and easy workarounds for Youtube and Facebook at work or school are long gone. If you want to beat internet filtering it takes something a little more sophisticated but the clue is that you have to use encryption.
