My company uses a web filter to filter out most websites. In the past I was able to use either Firefox or an old version of Firefox Wonder edition (a portable version). We just had 2 computers replaced recently that according to the IT guy "They have these new system locked down tighter".

When I try to access 2+2/FB/etc through IE I'll get an error like this:





I explained my new problem to my older brother and he tells me:

"Since it appears you can use USB drives, you can try:

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Download it at home and install it on an empty USB flash drive. Then attempt to use it at work. Even if they have the regular Firefox program locked down it might be specific only to the normal location that it runs from. It also might not, in which case I'll try to find something else."



I was hoping this would work, but when I put the FF portable file on the new computer and try to open the .exe file, I get this:




Anyone have any idea on how to get around this? These new computers are locked down like Guantanamo Bay.

It seem like they just filter out "bad" URLs with this software. So even if a site has "undesirable" content, but a clean sounding URL it might not get filtered out. Have you tried using a free internet proxy? A proxy is basically an intermediate between you and the site you are trying to access. So you type the site that you want to access into the proxy and then the proxy access the site and then gives you that information. Instead of you getting the information directly from the site you get it from the proxy. A proxy can be used to surf anonymously for example, because if the site you are trying to access tries to get your information it will end up getting the information from the proxy and not from you.

The great thing about proxies is that they also change the URL of the website you are visiting. Google search "free internet proxy." Pick one from the search results. I found daveproxy.co.uk for example. Type in twoplustwo.com in the URL space (all internet proxies will have a space to type in URLs, if they don't then they are just a list of popular proxies or an add site or something). I did it and it gave me the URL of http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/browse.ph.../b13/fnorefer/ . This URL leads directly to twoplustwo.com. You can surf the site within this URL and each link you click on will be daveproxy.co.uk/blablablablasometing. Giving you free reighn to browse twoplustwo, look up porn, see religous websites or do what ever you want basically.

Here is the catch. Most URL blockers block URLs with the word proxy in them. So you may have to search through a bunch of proxies to find one that works. Look for URLs that don't have the word proxy in them, obviously. Sometimes it's easiest to just skip to the 20th or 30th page of the google search as those URLs are less likely to have the word proxy in the URL, but you also get a lot of junk websites if you do that too. Just keep looking and it shouldn't be long before you are looking at 2girls1cup with your coworkers.

http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html

No offense, but why don't you just use your employer's network the way they ask you to instead of risking getting fired just to surf 2+2 which you can do from home?

Thanks! I'll try some of these tomorrow.


No offense taken. I feel like the 0% risk of getting fired (I would be warned first anyway) isn't enough of a deterrent to stop me from not being bored out of my mind for 50-60% of my day.