They Blocked Snopes!

[Alex_P]

We have a good Internet filter at work.

When you go to a filtered page, it shows you a page telling you why the page was filtered.

That page contains an option to click through to the filtered page anyway, if you think that you need the contents of that filtered page for something work-related. Doing so logs an event for the IT staff to look into later.

-- Alex

 

[Johnn Johnston]

Do you know the name of the filtering system? I'll see if I can find any exploits for it on the expanses of the internet/actual people.

 

[Jobz]

My high school blocked EVERYTHING other than Google & Wikipedia. Well, everything that could be used for entertainment purposes. Didn't deter me though, installed JAP on my laptop and bypassed the filter. Silly high school didn't take into account the fact that some of their students knew a thing or two about computers.

My office now blocks pretty much everything, which is sad because my job mainly consists of waiting around to be given something to do. This leaves hours upon hours of extreme boredom and nothing to do. For a few glorious days The Escapist wasn't blocked, but it is now. I've been using Snopes for the past few weeks to keep my brain from exploding but yesterday I realized I'd read every single urban legend on that thing. So now I don't know what to do.

P.S. - Anyone know of some good sites I could try which are similar to Snopes in that it's just stories and interesting articles? Anything else will probably be blocked.

 

[Molikroth]

My high school IT guy (also the head of the ICT department) and I had an awesome rivalry. I'd find a way past his stuff, he'd find further countermeasures. It ended with him deleting my computer account from the network. I gave a classmate £2 for his.

I suggest you give a program called Lozdodge a shot.

 

[curlycrouton]

Proxy servers?

or are they blocked as well?

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

My school's filter got stronger and stronger as the years went by.

At first we were able to completely avoid them by running a browser like Firefox from our pen-drives (my school was very nerdy-- we all had one of these). They responded by blocking nearly every program from being run outside of IE and the Microsoft Office suite. Next we all started using Proxy Servers, which worked well for a while... but of course word reached the ears of our IT guy and those were swiftly blocked. Finally we resorted to using an Administrator password to log on to Windows (there's a story behind how we got a hold of that, I'm sure). But by my Senior Year the school computers were almost unusable-- but by my Senior Year, we all had laptops, so we connected to the wireless network at the College that my school shares a building with.

 

[Johnn Johnston]

P.S. - Anyone know of some good sites I could try which are similar to Snopes in that it's just stories and interesting articles? Anything else will probably be blocked.

Try TV Tropes [www.tvtropes.org]. It can keep me reading for a while. Quite humourous, too.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

My school had a filter while I was there. I finally figured out that the filter couldn't block protected sites. Newegg was blocked except for the login page which has a security certificate. So I found a secured proxy and proceeded to pass the URL to everyone I saw as a protest to the retardation of my school. I never got caught.

EDIT: I am the milkman, my milk is delicious.
It is fortified with what the world wants, what the world needs.

 

[Lord Krunk]

P.S. - Anyone know of some good sites I could try which are similar to Snopes in that it's just stories and interesting articles? Anything else will probably be blocked.

Try TV Tropes [www.tvtropes.org]. It can keep me reading for a while. Quite humourous, too.

Guess what. They blocked that, too.

EDIT: I am the milkman, my milk is delicious.
It is fortified with what the world wants, what the world needs.

Ah, you've seen it. Good.

My evil plan is in motion....Bwahahah...

EDIT:

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Well, I think Faulkner's Hamlet trilogy and the Snopes family ultimately represent the new breed of Southerner that came after the Civil War. Cruel, humor less, and business ori-

Wait, what is this thread about?

 

[asinann]

Decisions to block Wikipedia is usually based on ignorance what Wikipedia actually is and how it is supposed to be used.

The main argument of its detractors is "Anyone can edit it, therefore it is not reliable" is nonsense at best. While it is true that anyone may edit it, this in itself says nothing about the quality of the articles. The obvious counter-question is: "what makes single-editor articles any more reliable?". Answer: nothing. A high number of editors does not lessen the quality.

Most of those single editor articles are written and reviewed by credible people within their industries, I could right now go edit the wiki on astrophysics to say that the sun has a yummy marshmallow center. Try using that reasoning on a college instructor, They'll tell you that wikipaedia can be used ONLY if you have another source to back it.

 

[Solo508]

Haha the good old filters. Well, I know how frustrating it can be but there is a simple way around it; Proxy's. It basically allows you to view a website via a single website. It sounds complicated but its incredibly simple.

You can find a list of hundreds of proxy servers here. I doubt your school has them all blocked:
http://proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml

The most popular ones (found on the right hand side of the screen) will be your best bet.

#1 proxify.com (18,738)
#2 proxeasy.com (15,917)
#3 cantblock.me (15,852)
#4 unblockall.net (14,837)

Another possible way is to have a browser program that automatically does this for you which you could put on a flash drive or even on the school computer, I've never used one but I've heard of them. Good luck

EDIT: Reading that over I think I made it sound incredibly complicated so I'll give you an example:

https://proxify.com/p/011010A1000110/687474703a2f2f736e6f7065732e636f6d2f

That website is Snopes.com, but your not on it, the proxy server is. Copy that into your browser bar in school and your off.

 

[Cheesus333]

The content filter at our school is a bit OTT, but the thick skulled KidTards in my class tend to find an online gaming site that they can sneak their way into every now and again. I just Wikipedia stuff or, failing that, draw crap in paint.

 

[Balgus]

you can set up your home computer as a proxy server and log into it from school. my friend did it when he couldnt be arsed to look for a proxy site that hadn't been blocked.

 

[samsprinkle]

I hate the schools internet. my teacher said I could surf all I want with a little grin on his face, and I looked for EVERYTHING and found NOTHING!

 

[Handofpwn]

It actually gets in the way of schoolwork sometimes too.

Oh, all the time.

I recall when i was a school-pit demon that 'humor' was banned.

What was one of the topics at the time? Well, that seems to be a slight problem.

Humor is also banned at my school, why dont they just use the reason "joy and happiness"? unfortunately, my school apparently uses a whitelist system, but, if you sign up at logmein.com you can access your computer remotely and not get blocked! take that, administrative bitches!

 

[Corven]

when I was still in school they were upgrading the internet filters one day so the only way you could access the internet was through a proxy, well I didn't know how to use proxy severs because I couldn't remember the names, so I took a chance and plugged my flash drive into the computer, which just so happened to have the firefox download program on it, so I just downloaded firefox onto the computer and I was able to get on the internet.

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

Our school has an adaptive filter that slowly blocks out everything fun. We were always constantly looking for new proxy servers to use. someone my senior year put a SNES modulater on the school computers, super mario bros. for all! that and a whole bunch of other games, it was teh Uber pwnage!

 

[Lukeje]

Wikipedia is also not a one-stop shop for information. It was never intended to be this and must not be used in this fashion. Wikipedia is extremely clear in this point: Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Original_research]. Everything in Wikipedia, I mean absolutely everything must have a verifiable source and people are encouraged to look up the sources and check for themselves. I know of no paper dictionaries that do this. Few publish their sources to begin with, and even fewer say "Don't take our word for it... go see for yourself". Wikipedia teaches critical viewing and source review. No other dictionary does this.


/S

You mean like the OED quotes all its sources? That's a 'paper dictionary'.

I recall when i was a school-pit demon that 'humor' was banned.

What was one of the topics at the time? Well, that seems to be a slight problem.

Humor is also banned at my school, why dont they just use the reason "joy and happiness"? unfortunately, my school apparently uses a whitelist system, but, if you sign up at logmein.com you can access your computer remotely and not get blocked! take that, administrative bitches!

Try spelling it 'humour'.

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

I am so using my censors avatar now... strongarm incoming!