How to circumvent Websense or the firewall at work or school

February 10, 2010 Update: Checkout this post on makeusof.com

I got this from boingboing.net:

• A group called Peacefire created proxy software called Circumventor to bypass censorware. Install this software on your home computer and allow others to use your proxy to access the web, or use your proxy from work or school to access any web site. (Thanks, Sean!)

• Bennett Haselton of Peacefire, who developed Circumventor, says:

  "For 90% of users in the USA affected by SmartFilter, there is no reason to use anything but Circumventor. The reasons are:

  1) It's simple to set up. Just run three simple point-and-click installers. We even have a wizard that comes up automatically to help you set up port forwarding on your router if you've never done it before.
  2) You are not required to install anything on the "censored" computer, you just bring a URL in with you to work.
  3) It works even if the censored network blocks direct connections to IP addresses outside the network (which would break some of the other solutions recommended in this guide).

  "If you're in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or some other country censored by SmartFilter, then your best choices are (a) TOR, or (b) use a Circumventor if you can get someone in a "free country" to set one up for you. (The reason Circumventor works for 90% of workplace-filtered users in the U.S. is that they can almost always set it up on their home computer and take the URL in with them. But not everybody in a censored *country* has someone outside who can help them.)

  "Circumventor is the *only* method (as far as I know) that will work reliably on computers where people are blocked from installing their own software (or even changing proxy settings) -- because after you install it on your home computer, all it gives you is a URL, and you can take that URL in with you to work and use it whenever you want. Many people in workplaces and libraries are blocked from installing software on their computers. Or even if they could, it would be a definite 'smoking gun' if anyone noticed that the software had been installed; whereas our software leaves fewer traces. (There is a 'smoking gun' in the form of a URL in the URL history, but that's much less likely to be noticed than a TOR icon on your desktop!)"

Tech Tags: websense firewall censorship smartfilter circumventor

How to create a bootable Windows XP CD/DVD

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

Check out this link for an excellent tutorial on how to create a bootable live Windows CD/DVD.

Why would you want a bootable Windows CD/DVD? It's in case your system crashes and you need to be able to access your files on the hard drive. This has actually happened to me twice in the past month. Using your Windows install disk to repair your installation is always an option, but at 39+ minutes it is really a pain.

Here is some information from the web page:

What is BartPE and PE Builder?

Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time!

(source: http://www.nu2.nu/)

technorati tags: bartPE bart PE PE builder Windows Windows boot disc

Bypass workplace firewalls: SSH tunneling for dummies

Franck from Franck's Place posted an excellent how-to some time ago on his blog. Specifically, he provides instructions on how to surf freely at work an bypass idiotic web surfing restrictions. I have quoted Franck's introduction, but will leave you to click the link to view the post in its entirety on Franck's blog.

SSH tunneling for dummies

"More and more, litigation and regulation is forcing companies to restrict what you can do on an office computer. For some people it's now easier to work from home than the office because of those constraints. The irony is that most people also have handheld devices with none of those constraints anyway. And even without any of those, it's very easy to bypass most protection systems.

For example, here is a way to bypass a corporate firewall that prevents you to access certain websites -- not that you should or want to do it. If you follow those steps, you do it at your own risk! But here it is, for educational purposes :)"

SSH tunneling for dummies

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How to Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook

Outlook has this annoying habit sometimes of downloading two copies of each message from POP servers. I just installed Outlook 2007 and wasn't really surprised that it too downloads duplicates. How do you delete 5 megabytes worth of duplicate emails that took two hours to download from your POP server? Here is how:

you can use the free software Microsoft Outlook Duplicate Items Remover which scans a selected folder for duplicate emails and moves them to a separate folder where you can delete them easily.

This is by far the easiest way to cope with this situation. The software does not only remove duplicate emails in Microsoft Outlook but also duplicate notes, contacts, calendar entries and tasks.

Below is a screen shot of the software:

Tags

emails duplicate emails outlook microsoft outlook outlook 2007