13 Secure Ways To Bypass Blocked Websites at School, Work & Home

Do you want to surf your favorite sites from your workplace or educational institute, but you are restricted by the stern blockades imposed by the networking department? Here are simple and effective means of accessing almost every website via your school or office computers without a hassle. Let's take a look at how to bypass blocked websites and enjoy the freedom of the Internet.

Option #1: Use proxies

Using proxies to surf the internet is perhaps one of the easiest and the most opted-for means of bypassing blocked websites. Accessing your desired website via a proxy makes sure that your IP is not visible to others on the Internet, making surfing safer than ever. Perhaps the most attractive part of using proxies is the lack of expense involved. There is a comprehensive list of websites that offer proxy surfing. In fact, a number of browser extensions are now available for free download that allows users to surf the internet without any boundaries.

Using proxy servers, you also have the advantage of being able to use a large number of chat messengers that would otherwise be blocked in your school or office. Most messengers have a built-in proxy server that allows you to chat seamlessly, despite the blockade.

Option #2: Use VPNs

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. VPNs add to the sense of security of internet users together with allowing a diversion from the imposed blockades. The use of VPNs has been particularly useful in safeguarding credit card numbers and users who deal with sensitive information, to protect them from online hackers. VPNs employs the use of encryption to pave you a rather different path for surfing the internet. As such, they are a safe way to bypass blocked websites.

The basis of the success of using a VPN to help you bypass blocked websites from your workplace or school is that VPN masks your actual location while surfing. Apparently, using VPN, you are an internet user from a country other than your own.

Setting up a VPN is very easy. The first step is to download one of the reliable VPNs that suits you the best. With a difference in the range of features, you can even pick a completely free VPN service. Once you have downloaded the app, you would be given a range of server options to choose from, with each server mostly representing a different country. The choice of the server largely depends on the country of the website you need to access and it is recommended that the two be the same. Hence, with the use of VPNs, you can bypass any kind of blockade imposed by your school or office IT department and surf the net unnoticed, owing to your altered virtual location.

A VPN can also be installed on your smartphone or tablet, making it one of the most popular options to be considered to surf the internet in an area with a strict website block.

Option #3: Use Ultrasurf

Ultrasurf has proven to be extremely instrumental in allowing people to surpass the Great Firewall of China. Using Internet Explorer as its default browser, Ultrasurf allows internet users to surf the internet via any of the three servers it offers. It allows its users to gain access to almost any blocked site without eliciting an alarm in the IT department. The three servers offered by Ultrasurf have fantastic internet speeds that can compensate for the hassle involved in the use of Internet Explorer. The good news is that a number of the contemporary internet browsers, such as Chrome, can now make use of Ultrasurf through its dedicated extension.

It should, however, be kept in mind that Ultrasurf is presently only fully functional on Windows. For MAC and Linux users, Ultrasurf might not offer any advantage. Also, Ultrasurf users have often complained about the nagging traffic of pop-up ads that accompany the software. There has been an increase in the ease by which viruses can be introduced into the system with the use of Ultrasurf.

Option #4: Replace URL with IP Addresses

The norm of imposing a blockade on schools and offices is to produce a list of URLs to be banned and then using the same list to check the internet activities. For websites that have a known IP address, using an IP address instead of a URL to surf is an easy and effective method to bypass the blockade imposed by the authorities.

To obtain IP addresses of the websites you need to access, you need to start by running the Command Prompt and typing 'ping www.websitename.com'. This would help you in acquiring an IP address for the named website, which you can use to type in for future internet surfing.

Option #5: Making Use of RSS Feeds

The content of websites that use RSS feeds can easily be accessed. Various feed readers now allow internet users to avail the content of the blocked websites without even opening the actual page. RSS feeds are now also available for various social media networking sites. By simply subscribing to these feeds, you can view the website’s content in a dedicated feed reader or receive an email containing the total material displayed on the website. However, not all websites have an RSS feed, which means that you can use this option to bypass blocked websites only on occasion.

Option #6: Surf Mobile Versions of Websites

At times, one of the safest options to bypass blocked websites on a monitored network is to open the mobile version of the sites. There are various applications that can be installed on the system to allow access to the mobile version of the websites that can be surfed without coming under the notice of the strict blocking system of your school or office. Let's take a look at how this method can be used to bypass blocked websites.

To open the mobile version of a website, type the following in the address section, with the domain being replaced by the peculiar domain of the website you wish to access: www.google.com/gwt/n?u=domain.com.

Option #7: Make Your Email Your Browser

For some people, emailing might be a convenient way of communication. But, for someone trying to open blocked websites on the internet, emailing might actually be the most modern means of bypassing the network barricade.

Availing the reliable services of Web2Mail allows you to view the content of your desired website by emailing it to your email address. The Web2Mail services present you the entire content of the website without any charges.

Option #8: Retranslate Your Way Out

Bypass your IT administrator’s blockade against your favorite website by using a translator that translates the content of the website on its own page that might not be blocked. Simply, type in the address of the website and use a translating service, such as Google Translate, and retranslate the page. The translated content is displayed almost immediately.

Option #9: Convert Web Pages to PDFs

Software such as PDFmyURL and Web2PDF allow you to download a PDF version of the content on the pages of the blocked website. Simply, enter the URL of the website and the pages would be made available to you in PDF format in no time.

Option #10: Using The Cache

Search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, tend to save web pages in what is known as the “cache” of the engine. Retrieving the cache can help you access the web page despite the blockade. However, this method is much more effective for web pages for which past content can be helpful because the cache consists of past pages. For some people, the cached copies can be useful to serve as temporary alternatives before they are able to access the latest content later from an unrestricted computer network.

To access the cache of the search engine, enter the blocked website’s name in the search box and select the cached version of the web page. For Google users, cached pages can be searched exclusively by using the dedicated search operator: (cache:www.domain.com).

Option #12: Using Wayback Machine

Wayback machine is a service that enables you to access the past pages of the blocked websites. As such, it can be used to bypass blocked websites. It is very much similar to the cache of search engines in the sense that the user is unable to retrieve the latest content on the website. It allows the user to select the date of the web page he or she wants to gain access to by displaying a calendar. The pages of the blocked website from the selected date are then opened for the user to make use of, bypassing the blockade.

Enter the URL: http://web.archive.org and type in the name of the blocked website. Then, choose from the calendar the date of the content you wish to retrieve or simply select from the latest date to obtain the web pages.

Option #13: Install Tor browser

Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, is a browser that allows you to surf the internet anonymously. It hides your IP address and allows you to access almost any site on the internet, even the sites that are blocked by your office or school IT administrator. The browser is free to download and can be set up very easily.

Bypass Blocked Websites: Final Thoughts

With the above mentioned foolproof ways to bypass blocked websites, you can easily browse all the websites from your educational institute and/or office. Tell us which one of these methods works the best for you? What's your preferred method to bypass blocked websites?

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