Have you ever been blocked from websites at school or work? Have you ever wondered what the sites contain that are so malicious that people will spend time working on how to stop you from looking at them. Generally speaking you are being stopped from visiting sites that are considered non-related to your computer access.
If this is happening at to you most likely the blocked sites are extremely innocuous and are probably gaming sites such as http://www.arcadethunder.com or sports sites such as http://www.espn.com or a myriad of other sites. These sites offer breaks from your daily routines and allow a little downtime, however the powers that be have deemed them inappropriate for viewership.
So what is a person to do to get around this system? Many people just rail against the establishment and proceed as normal limited by their ability to access these sites. Others have found the way around the system. They are using a system called a phpProxy. This system is simple and useful to the individual looking to by-pass the firewall that is in place limiting your ability to view the internet at your leisure.
The system simply uses another location to download all of your surfing habits onto. Simply do a search on the web and you will turn up a wealth of phpProxy sites. Once you log-into the site you will see a simple bar that looks like your toolbar. Type the web address of the site that you wish to visit into the bar. The Proxy will then serve as a "Proxy" for your local server and download the page for you. This downloaded page will be viewed through the eyes of the proxy that you are using. You should now be able to function as normal with the page that you are own as long as you stay on the Proxy server location.
This system affords you two levels of protection:
1) The site that you are visiting is cached on the phpProxy location and your local server never knows that you visited the end site. It only knows that you were at the phpProxy site.
2) Because your IP address is never divulged by the phpProxy you are not at risk for spam and viruses.
So the next time you are locked out of a favorite website at work or home simply find a favored phpProxy and dial in through it. It is a great way to avoid the issues of natively searching the internet. While protecting your local server and local computer.
