Suppose you’re at a computer with internet access in an office, a school computer lab, or a public library and you want to visit one of your favorite websites like Youtube, Facebook, or Myspace–but you find, much to your dismay, that you can’t access them because you’ve been blocked. Is there still a way to visit your favorite websites? The answer is “yes!”

Although large computer networks employ network administrators to block any websites they choose by loading firewalls and a unique software on your Internet Explorer browser, you are not entirely helpless. While it’s much easier to block rather than unblock a website, with a little ingenuity you can reclaim your power to surf at will.

If you’re ready to get the web back, four techniques you can use to unblock websites are using proxy servers, using free services that help you use proxy servers, change your computer settings, and use Google tools and services.

Let’s review each technique in detail so you can learn how to apply the one you like.

Unblocking Websites Technique #1: Use Proxy Servers

Proxy servers can make your computer access the internet in an anonymous way. They bypass the filters the network administrator has chosen to limit your freedom to explore the world wide web. Quite simply a proxy server is a computer outside the control of the computer network you’re using. Since proxy servers have their own IP address, they can be accessed from your computer. You simply connect to the proxy server and in turn it connects to the blocked website. You can now both read and interact with the blocked website.

How Do Proxy Servers Work?

Since your computer cannot access the blocked website, the proxy server does it on your behalf. It is this third-party computer that connects with the blocked website.

How Do You Find Proxy Servers?

So how do you find proxy servers when you’re sitting at a restricted computer?
You can do a Google search for keywords like, “proxy servers, web proxies, proxy, proxy list, proxies, proxy websites, and proxy sites.”

Unblocking Websites Technique #2: Use A Free Service To Unblock

You can visit certain websites like sneaking.in or unblock-website.net that perform unblocking services for you. All you have to do is follow the simple directions on such sites. Many of them are free. They are websites that help you use proxy servers but they do the work for you.

Unblocking Websites Technique #3: Change Computer Settings

If you are behind a restricted computer that is not part of a computer network controlled by a network administrator, you can disable the blocking software and change the setting of the firewall. The advantage of this method is that you can reclaim the full functionality of your computer rather than have to rely on a circumvention technique. This is useful if you will be using this computer often or plan to use it for a long time during a single session.

How Do You Change Browser Settings?

If your computer has been restricted from the browser, once you have loaded up your browser, go to the tools tab and change the security settings. Suppose, for some reason, you do not wish to change the settings on your browser, then another option is to download and install another browser. If, for example, your restrictions are on Microsoft Internet Explorer download and install Mozilla Firefox to surf the web.

How Do You Disable Restrictive Software?

If your restriction is not based on a browser setting but on a software that blocks any browser you use, then you can either delete the software, stop it from loading after you restart the computer, or stop the software from running by pressing the keys Ctrl, Alt, and Delete simultaneously.

Unblocking Websites Technique #4: Get Help From Google

Since Google is a major search engine, it is highly unlikely that the network administrator has blocked you from the Google website. It would be as unlikely as a city administrator blocking cars from using the main street. For this reason, Google can be your friend when you have been banned from visiting certain websites. They have many tools to help you out. These tools include Google Cache, Google Mobile Search, and Google Proxy. Let’s look at how to use each one of these freedom-fighting tools.

How To Use Google Cache

After firing up your browser, visit the Google home page. Once there search for the name of the website you want to visit. When you see the name of the website in the index, don’t click on the name link. You’ll see the name hyperlink, below that the description, and below that the website URL. On the right of the URL, you’ll see the word “Cached.“ This is a link that will take you to a stored version of the banned website on the Google server.

How To Use Google Mobile Search

Google transforms a regular web page into a mobile page by stripping CSS and JavaScript’s and this transforms the usual website URL as well as makes a large page small. If you want to view Google from your computer browser the way it would appear in a mobile phone, add /imode to the end of the google.com URL.

How To Use Google Like A Proxy

Although Google is not a proxy server, you can use it’s language translation tool to work like one. You can translate an English speaking website into a different language or from the English language back into the English language. This translation of the language of the forbidden website can sometimes fool the blocking software.

How To Access The Language Translation Feature

Either do a Google search for websites that translate websites from one language to another or use www.oreillynet.com to get a code to do it.

What Is The Best And Fastest Technique?

After reviewing these five techniques, you’ll come to the conclusion that it is indeed possible to slip by filters and blocks to access any websites you want online.

All of these techniques are easy to use and apply. If one does not work, then try another one.

Almost all these techniques can be done without requiring any downloading or installation, which makes it easy to do, especially if you’re on a computer that does not allow you to download anything to your computer’s hard drive. In addition, you can surf the web without having to alert the network administrator.

While the first technique, using a proxy server, is the fastest and most popular way of unblocking a website, your network administrator may also be aware of them, too. What do you do then if your chosen proxy server, too, is blocked. The solution is to get a proxy list! These are websites that contain a large list of proxy servers, and while you may be blocked from many of them, there are always more than enough proxy servers online that will still be available to use.
With enough resourcefulness and ingenuity, it is easy enough to freely surf the web and visit any website you please.