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I'm using network, where services such as Gmail or any other e-mails, Google Drive, Dropbox, all social networks are blocked.
Basically my goal is to access simply GMail, but I couldn't find any way to do that so far. I understand that different proxies have different filtering rules, so please post any tricks or your-way solutions.

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    Please note that if you try to bypass e.g. the firewall of your company, you might break internal rules and lose your job.
    – Frank Meulenaar
    Dec 2, 2012 at 13:28

9 Answers 9

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  • Following general methods are worth to try:

    • Try to use HTTPS instead of HTTP which is: https://mail.google.com instead of http://mail.google.com, sometimes company forgetting to filter HTTPS sites.

      SSL VPNs will do this automatically without messing up settings (e.g. Express VPN which is SSL based OpenVPN, or try hide.me).

    • Try substituting the IP address for a domain name; e.g., enter http://74.125.225.102 instead of google.com in a browser's address bar. nslookup from the command line can easily allow you to issue DNS requests.
    • Try to use one of free public proxies in your browser
    • Try to install Tor Browser

Summary

In summary, you can bypass proxies by different methods. It's a very complex topic and there are thousands of methods bypassing the proxy and in very secured networks you'll find maybe only few methods which works, so you have to check all of them first. There is no really one simple answer for it and never will be, so please don't down-vote it, because if it doesn't work in your network or specified case, that method could work in different environment, so please respect users from different countries.

Feel free to extend or add other actual methods found on the internet, to make it actual and up-to-date. If some of the methods are out-dated, please cross them over, for the future references using strike tag, instead of removing them or down-voting the whole page.

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    The suggestion for using Tor to access Gmail is not really a good one...
    – jiggunjer
    Nov 27, 2015 at 0:47
  • Anybody get Dropbox to work through a company proxy that is blocking *.dropbox.* and where you don't have access to the router?
    – thdoan
    Sep 2, 2016 at 2:49
  • @10basetom Try to ask another question.
    – kenorb
    Sep 2, 2016 at 10:59
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You can use Tor browser, browse for it in Google, get it. You dont need to install it, just extract the file and set up a tor network and browse whatever you want.

Tor Browser

Alternatively you can also use http://hidemyass.com. It is a web based proxy.

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If you have SSH access to a server outside the the restricted network, you could open an SSH tunnel to that server on a local port and use it as a proxy in your browser.

Create SSH tunnel: 

ssh -D 12345 [email protected]

Tell your browser to use localhost and port 12345 as SOCKS proxy.

This solution requires SSH access to another server and the port (usually 22) on which your SSH server runs has to be open in your restricted network. You can also run SSH server on any other port. However, your connection will be fully encrypted and the admins of your network will not be able to see any data or even which hosts yo connect to. All they see is encrypted data and the IP of your remote server.

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  • unfortunately all ports are filtered, I can't even ping (DNS are resolved by the proxy), so I could only use proxy (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and socks proxy I hope).
    – kenorb
    Jul 28, 2012 at 11:34
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    You could try to run your SSH server on a different port. For example on the FTP port. You could also scan if some of the high port numbers are open and run the SSH server on one of those.
    – Max Kueng
    Jul 28, 2012 at 16:54
  • Or get one of those 3G USB things. Not free as in beer, but free as in no restrictions.
    – Max Kueng
    Jul 28, 2012 at 16:55
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Maybe it was answered by others - the top answer - https://superuser.com/a/454829/122085 - is really comprehensive - my feeling is that many of the methods will not work - I'm pretty sure that if certain sites are blocked, the proxying services will not work as well and you may have to roll your own - http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-proxy-server/12890/

My (rather naive) approach would be to use mobile hotspot, or simply use the mobile device.

Another alternative would be to RDP (remote desktop) to an Amazon / Digital Ocean instance.

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Firefox plugins which can help to bypass the internet filtering:

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Since your profile says you are in London I am going to assume that it's the network where you work that has blocked these services. Since you would be breaking company policy, you might lose your job, just be aware of that.

I have gotten around some restrictions where I work by using a different top-domain, for example using google.se instead of google.com and the likes. It will work sometimes, not all the time. For email and online dating sites I usually use my phone, it's completely separate from the company network and outside of their control.

However for gmail, what you could do is to find a web based e-mail provider that isn't blocked (perhaps easier said than done) and then use imap to connect to your email account. It's not an ideal workaround, but still a phone with an email client is still probably your best solution.

And depending on where you are in the city, perhaps there is an wifi-hotspot in your vicinity and can use that with your phone.

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  • Now I'm in Switzerland, because of contract. google works, but gmail doesn't. google.se domain doesn't help me, because whatever I type, everything is redirected to mail.google.com/mail which is blocked, because there is as well URL filtering, so no any tricks with translation services, mobile version, cached version, similar services works.
    – kenorb
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:34
  • imap doesn't work as most of the ports which are blocked, DNS is internal, most of the sites works through proxy which translate the DNS hosts
    – kenorb
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:43
  • all proxies are blocked, which I've posted, removed by Bob (thanks Bob, it could help somebody else)
    – kenorb
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:46
  • which could work actually, could be Filtering Bypass bug in Squid or using different hacks described in the post below (ah, it was removed as well, thanks Oliver, great job)
    – kenorb
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:47
  • I could try using VPN through SSH tunel over HTTPS (ah. it was removed as well from other post as well, thanks Ramhound), but I'll have to spend more time on it, in addition I've to setup configuration on the *nix remote machine.
    – kenorb
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:50
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In some specified cases (squid used for proxy < 3.1.19), this vulnerability could help: http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2012/Apr/116

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Some of my ideas:

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There's a really easy fix for bypass some blocked sites. Use Google translate, look for the blocked site on google use the "translate this site" google will open you a translated version of the site (you can't disable it inside.)

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