Ninja Proxy Facebook Access

Yes, I know it is addictive, yes, I know you love to spend hours on there – which is probably the reason Facebook is blocked at your work. I did some work last year on a content filter at a medical company – although we did not block anything, we simply monitored the amount of time users spent on different sites. The amount of time some people spent on Facebook, MySpace and Ebay was simply incredible – one young lady was spending over 30 hours a week regularly on these websites!!!  Which is not bad for a 35-hour contract of employment, and we didn’t even count those who used a Facebook proxy.

The idea of monitoring the web sites people used and for how long was obviously to help build a solid case for blocking them. You see the company HAD quite a relaxed Internet Usage Policy and they were also quite happy to allow people to browse what they wanted (within reason) during breaks and after work. However, management were shocked at the amount of time people were actually spending on these sites, after all it didn’t seem like they had much time left for actual work.

So, we ended up blocking ….

Now for ordinary people who just want to keep in touch or check in with friends occasionally this can be a bit annoying. So, I want to tell you a bit about how websites are normally blocked within a corporate network. However, if you are thinking of circumventing them, then first of all though you check your employment and internet use policies – if there’s stuff in there about not using the internet for personal use etc, etc and phrases like subject to disciplinary actions APPEAR – then you’re probably best waiting until you get home. Accessing web sites that your company have specifically decided to block is likely to get you into trouble – but hey that’s your choice.

Facebook Blocked by Firewall – Using A Web Proxy

The very simplest way to block access to a website is just by using a proxy or firewall combination. Here you can just create a single blacklist of websites which will not be allowed through. So for instance, in this case, we might-have the URL – www.facebook.com listed, perhaps the IP address of the Facebook servers or maybe both. All internet traffic will go through the firewall or proxy so when you request any websites in this list you just get sent to a pre-prepared page instead (usually a warning or information page).

This is the way everyone used to do this, although it’s pretty easy to get round now. If you look on the internet about ways to access Facebook at work or school, you’ll find that the usual suggestion is to use an external proxy (they’ll often have stupid names like shadow proxy or something like that!) What happens here is you go to a proxy website, then type in your URL (e.g., Facebook) into the web proxy, which then fetches the page and displays it in a little frame for you. From your site you are communicating with the proxy server (not Facebook) and so the Firewall does not block your request.

In MOST places this does not work anymore for a variety of reasons, however these are the main ones:

1. The proxy sites are themselves blocked by the firewall
2. Firewalls only allow access through the company proxy (which will not allow a proxy chain).
3. Most companies now use more sophisticated filters which will look inside the network packet for the blocked site. Meaning using just a proxy won’t work.

If your company does not bother with these restrictions, then you may be able to use the web proxies to access sites online but  most simply won’t work. In fact if your company network is that insecure then you may actually find a free online proxy and surf directly through it (instead of through frames in a web proxy). Just search for some free proxies, find their IP address and input the address into your browser under the screen below which you can find under Internet Options / Connections / LAN settings or something like that.

Here you relay all your web requests directly through the external proxy which is normally quicker and you shouldn’t have advertisements and little frames added to your browsing session. If you find a fast enough proxy then you may not even notice the difference in speed from normal surfing.

Remember this only works in environments that have limited security settings so check it out before hand. Most places you won’t be able to even modify those settings in Internet Explorer (there’s ways around this little problem as well but that’s for another post).

Facebook Blocked By Content Filter

This is by far the most difficult scenario to bypass as content filters actually look at the data in each network packet. So even if you are using a proxy to relay your request to a blocked site like Facebook, then the content filter will still see the url in your data.  So not only do you need the protection of a proxy server, but you also need some way to stop the filter reading the contents of your web requests too.

The solution is encryption, if you encrypt your connection nobody can see anything except the IP address of the server you are accessing.  To do this you need to set up either your own remote VPN or you use a trusted service like Identity Cloaker which encrypts everything by default anyway. Of course, Identity Cloaker is a paid service but if you just want to get round a Facebook block Then you’re in luck as the demo version is available for free which actually allows access to Facebook!

Ninja Proxy Facebook Access Demonstration

See this video – Facebook Blocked

Identity Cloaker Demo

Click on the graphic to go to the download page, use the demo account and you can connect through a secure encrypted tunnel to-any of Identity Cloaker’s servers and effectively change your IP address at will. Through this you can surf through all of the most sophisticated content filters and secure infrastructures.  This version is only the demonstration so it will only work with a specific list of websites – Facebook and Twitter Both are both currently on the allowed list.

So, if Facebook is Blocked and you want a solution – there you have it.  i did mention this earlier but remember if you’re sitting at your desk and someone sees you accessing Faceboo0k then you might have some problems. They’re certainly going to know you’ve BYPASSED Their filter!!! So be aware of you company policy. This method will also work in the many countries which -have Facebook Blocked and filtered as well. There are quite a few other sites allowed in the demo modes which have been blocked in countries across the world – such as Blogger, Twitter, Squidoo and Wikimedia for instance. If you want to use it for accessing –other websites like BBC iPlayer , Hulu, Pandora etc, etc. which are normally restricted by location – then you’ll need to upgrade your subscription any problems ask the Identity Cloaker guys.   I like watching loads of stuff, which is blocked where I am, including some of the Australian and Canadian TV channels normally inaccessible from the UK.

Anyway, hope this helps people and do not get in to-any trouble!!