sticking it to the man's censoring server

I recently received this comment from a reader named Brian:

Hi CG,

I'm sad that I can no longer read your blog at work. When I click your bookmark I get a blocked page error labeling you as Pornography.

I appreciate your good writing and your hottness. I thought you would want to be aware of this; I don't know if it could somehow be related to your Google problems (I'm thinking not; it's probably due to my surfing being monitored at work). They also recently blocked the Sun (UK) website in some other category.

I’m guessing that my spanky new porn label has more to do with webcrawlers finding my affiliate links to the very fine woman-owned, austral companies I Feel Myself et al than the recent Google snafu, but I could be wrong. I am not tech savvy. I don’t do my own code; mucking about in HTML frightens me. I do, however, know a few ways around be cock blog-blocked by The Man, and I’d like to share them with Brian, as well as any other readers who are having their daily reading fun impinged by cold and callous work computers. With a smidge of web-engine ingenuity, you'll  be sitting in your Dilbert cubicle speedreading about oral, anal or emo snug as houses in no time.

First, you can join an RSS-feed news aggregate like Bloglines, Rojo or Google Reader. I myself use Bloglines to read most of the blogs I read on a regular basis. Essentially, these servers allow you to subscribe to blogs whose posts are served up piping hott and fresh into your account. Most bloggers have RSS feeds, so you can get all of yours in one easy-to-read web-address that your work server won’t recognize as porn.

Upside: Well organized and clear, and everything all at once.

Downside: Not everyone publishes a full feed, so you may be out of luck when you want to read the full post and your favorite blogger publishes an excerpt. Also, your access to hyperlinks is denied: you can’t click on a link and get a page in a verboten blog. Finally, you’re less apt to comment or click on ad links, which is more of a downside to me than you, but, hey, it’s my blog that’s in question.

A proxy service will provide another way around the porn-blocked server; proxifiers are services that essentially gives you a false IP address. In my undoubtedly simplified and incomplete understanding it goes a little like this: your work server has some list of addresses that are blocked; however, if you change the address, your server won’t recognize the webpage. Proxified pages show the name of the proxy service before the web addresses. You can Google “free proxy server” and get any number of services that allow you to look as if you’re not looking from your own business IP, which will in turn make you look like what you’re not doing is looking at porn.

Upside: You can get any page through this method, and not just blogs, so you don’t have to have a page with an RSS feed, which you do with Bloglines and the like. Also, you can click on the hyperlinks and get other pages in the bad, bad, naughty, should be spanked, blog, which you can’t do from an RSS feed service. You can also comment and click on adverts.

Downside: Free proxy servers can be hella annoying. You can have very spotty access, and you can be denied when you most want to read. You can, however, pay for a proxy and get better service, but that’s kind of desperate.

An online translation page is one more way around The Man, The trick is to find one  that allows you to translate “English” to “English.” Type in the address you want to look at, and you’ve successfully confused both the translation page and the work server. This process works along the same lines as the proxy IP method—that the translation page changes the web-address and therefore your work server can’t recognize it for what it is. Just Google “free online translation” and pick one you like.

Upside: It’s free and fairly reliable. Plus, if you read more than one language, you can thrill to really awkward translations.

Downside: It’s time consuming. And it feels really geeky, for no explicable reason.

Finally, if your webpage publishes to feedburner, you can subscribe to it. Feedburner works like RSS aggregate pages and updates as soon as bloggers publish their new posts. However, not everyone publishes a feed to feedburner; I don’t, though I will be just as soon as my friend O links me, and then you can evade detection by reading my pretty dumb things through feedburner. I don’t really understand it, but maybe you will. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

Update: it's up. Go here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PrettyDumbThings, or click this little button to subscribe

Upside: Easy, undetectable and reliable.

Downside: Pretty much the same as an RSS feed--you can't look at hyperlinked pages, you can't add a comment, you can't see advertisements and you can't click on affiliate links and bring me the cold, hard American cash.

If any of you readers who are undoubtedly more tech-savvy than I have any suggestions for Brian, please chime in. Spread the undetectable love. Stick it to The Man.

In the end, he won’t know, though if he did, he might like it.

Update: My close personal friend and very favorite kilt-wearing dude Karl Elvis has kindly provided me with this Boing-Boing link that gives a highly comprehensive list to defeating corporate censorship.

Comments

[danae]

Your RSS feed is also available on LiveJournal and I know many use Livejournal to read blogs at work.

[Karl Elvis]

Is it wrong that I get a minor thrill from hearing you call me close personal friend?

[KingBob]

Companies own their computers and they have a right to block whatever they want. The poster needs to be careful because if he tries to get around the blockade and the employer finds out, he could get fired. He should use his computer at home, the library or internet cafe to visit blocked sites, IMO. KINGBOB

[Karl Elvis]

Fuck thier rights k'bob. Their rights don't trump mine.

[jaykay]

wow, this is the first time i've read your blog and im obsessed. the perfect mixture of naughtiness and expression has me hooked. even better, this post taught me how to get an rss feeder! im new to the whole peeking in on the lives of people all over the world through imagining in my head the scenes you guys literally create so well so i didnt know about this. but now thanks to you i no longer have to try to go through a plethora of URLs.

keep up the work!