Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Pillette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works. Sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: we were gonna talk about something, but we'll have to
Speaker 1: do it through someone else. Yeah, yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: have a proxy. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, I'd say so.
Speaker 1: You had another wonderful segue. Thank you, Mr Pilette. So
Speaker 1: this is in response to an email we received U.
Speaker 1: Tim West wrote to us and said, I'm writing to
Speaker 1: you on behalf of your podcast on parental controls. While
Speaker 1: I was listening to this podcast, I noticed you were
Speaker 1: talking about how your children would find ways to bypass
Speaker 1: parental controls. This made me think of proxy avoidance systems.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that this would be an interesting podcast
Speaker 1: to develop since I, as well as many others, are
Speaker 1: interested in this topic. Thank you for your in formative podcast.
Speaker 1: There joy to listen to. Well, Thank you, Tim. It's
Speaker 1: a joy to get that kind of email. Um okay,
Speaker 1: so let's start this off by saying we do not
Speaker 1: recommend you use proxies to get around systems. Uh. That way,
Speaker 1: there gout that on the table. We can move on
Speaker 1: from there. Actually, speaking of of unusual, I guess it's
Speaker 1: funny that we looked at this subject very differently when
Speaker 1: we were starting to do the research on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very true. Uh. Pallette, when he thinks of proxies,
Speaker 1: was thinking of a kind of an administrative system that's
Speaker 1: used to kind of, uh, well, we'll put limitations on
Speaker 1: what you can and can't see when you access the web,
Speaker 1: Whereas I was thinking more along the lines of of
Speaker 1: what I think Tim was saying, which is that, you know,
Speaker 1: using certain websites to get around barriers that would otherwise
Speaker 1: be between you and the content you want to see.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting, I guess, uh, I was saying that
Speaker 1: Pelette's kind of looking at it at the the sort
Speaker 1: of the law abiding way, and I was looking at
Speaker 1: it at the the hooligan kind of way. How unusual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it never would have pegged it would. Well, what I
Speaker 1: was thinking about was personal experience working in corporations where
Speaker 1: they will put up a in a very advanced firewall
Speaker 1: which blocks a lot of a lot of cyber attacks
Speaker 1: and um basically keeps you from going out to UH
Speaker 1: porn sites or to spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: Facebook or your email account and things like that. Basically
Speaker 1: trying to keep people productive and keep the company from
Speaker 1: suffering any harm via the Internet. And in this case,
Speaker 1: a proxy server would allow you to get information through
Speaker 1: the firewall, so you you you're essentially bypassing the firewall,
Speaker 1: but you're bypassing it in ways that the company allows
Speaker 1: you to bypass it. So it's like, guess you can
Speaker 1: in fact go to the corporate website UH and to
Speaker 1: some of our competitors to do research, but you may
Speaker 1: not go shopping on Amazon, right. And it kind of
Speaker 1: helps to sort of give a brief overview of how
Speaker 1: the Internet works, sort of an Internet infrastructure rundown to
Speaker 1: sort of understand what we're talking about here. So think
Speaker 1: of the Internet as a series of servers and clients.
Speaker 1: It's not a series of tubes that administration is never mind,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about clients and servers. The client requests
Speaker 1: information from servers, and think of all the servers across
Speaker 1: the world as being nodes, and when you send out
Speaker 1: a request from a client, it goes out until it
Speaker 1: reaches the destination where that information resides. Because all the
Speaker 1: information on the Internet exists on a physical machine somewhere
Speaker 1: more multiple physical machines sometimes I mean for redundancy's sake,
Speaker 1: there are multiple machines with that info. So your your
Speaker 1: request goes out and then that server serves up the
Speaker 1: information sends it back to you. It goes through all
Speaker 1: those nodes, of various nodes to get to you. It
Speaker 1: may not go through the same ones that your request
Speaker 1: went through. Uh. They come in packets. The information comes
Speaker 1: into these little uh, these little packets of information that
Speaker 1: gets reassembled at your computer and then you've got whatever
Speaker 1: it was you sent your request out to get. So
Speaker 1: a proxy server sits between your client and all the
Speaker 1: other servers. It is uh, it's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a guardian in a way, so it can intercept information
Speaker 1: being sent out or being brought in too, from the
Speaker 1: servers to the client or vice versa. And that's where
Speaker 1: you get filtering, where you can have a proxy server
Speaker 1: set up with filters that block certain websites, you know,
Speaker 1: complete access if you want, so just think of it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty simple really, It's just a big database of
Speaker 1: websites saying, you know, don't allow anyone on this side
Speaker 1: of the proxy server to access these websites. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: very simple kind of concept. Uh, and that's your basic
Speaker 1: proxy server. Well, and it reminds me actually of Tour.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that you're familiar with Tour because what Tour
Speaker 1: does is, um it's an anonymous web browsing software solution.
Speaker 1: And uh, it uses the concept that Jonathan was just
Speaker 1: talking about about the different nodes. UM. Once you send
Speaker 1: a request, in your request bounces between computers in different places,
Speaker 1: and it basically prevents you from being your traffic from
Speaker 1: being analyzed. So if you are from you know, the
Speaker 1: United States, and you use Tour to mask your your information,
Speaker 1: your signal gets bounced around and you might appear to
Speaker 1: be coming from Sweden, for example, because it is basically
Speaker 1: fooling those servers into thinking you're from somewhere else. It's
Speaker 1: it's very much like those spy movies when they're trying
Speaker 1: to trace the call. Right, he's calling from Luxembourg. No,
Speaker 1: wait it's Paris. Wait no, it's Sydney. Australia, same sort
Speaker 1: of concept, really and uh and what Tim was sort
Speaker 1: of referring to are these proxy sites that are run
Speaker 1: by various individuals um where you can log into this
Speaker 1: proxy site and then from the proxy site you can
Speaker 1: then access other websites. So let's say that you are
Speaker 1: trying to access a video site that's hosted in another
Speaker 1: country and that country says only only citizens of that
Speaker 1: country can have access to that site. So you since
Speaker 1: you're notice is and you know, you get an access
Speaker 1: denied when you try to access that site directly. You're
Speaker 1: not thinking of the BBC directly, are you, because they
Speaker 1: completely do not allow citizens of the United States to
Speaker 1: access their web shows. I can neither confirm nor deny that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were in Europe, say you might
Speaker 1: be able to access Hulu, so it would be the
Speaker 1: same thing. Right, Let's just use a completely theoretical example
Speaker 1: like that. So let's say that I'm in Europe and
Speaker 1: I want access Hulu and I can't. Let's stop smirking
Speaker 1: at any rate, So what what one potential solution? And
Speaker 1: granted again we're not uh suggesting you do this, but
Speaker 1: you could find a proxy site that's located within that
Speaker 1: country and visit that that proxy site. Then you normally
Speaker 1: have to fill out a form of some sort and
Speaker 1: then use that to UH to navigate towards the site
Speaker 1: you really want to go to. Now, from the perspective
Speaker 1: of your target site, it looks like you're coming from
Speaker 1: the proxy. They don't see that you're back in Europe
Speaker 1: or Atlanta, Georgia, or wherever you happen to really be.
Speaker 1: They see your location as being from whatever the proxy
Speaker 1: site is and UH and so as a result, you
Speaker 1: may be able to get access to this information that
Speaker 1: otherwise you could not access. UM. That's the basic idea
Speaker 1: behind these these proxy avoidance systems. UH. There are some
Speaker 1: major major issues with proxy avoidance systems that we should
Speaker 1: talk about. The first is that unless you are absolutely
Speaker 1: certain that the person running the site is legitimate, you
Speaker 1: risk having all of your traffic monitored and recorded and
Speaker 1: scrutinized by whomever is running that site, because once you
Speaker 1: fill out that form and that information, you're using their
Speaker 1: site to to browse around. If they're tracking the information,
Speaker 1: they can see what you're doing. So if you access
Speaker 1: a site where you have to put in a user
Speaker 1: name and password, there's a chance that they could have
Speaker 1: access to that information. This is what we in the
Speaker 1: Internet biz tend to refer to as a bad thing. Yeah, yes, exactly, So, UM,
Speaker 1: definitely be careful. I, you know, don't recommend using proxy
Speaker 1: sites on in general. I will not say that I
Speaker 1: have never used a proxy site. I won't say that
Speaker 1: I have either, right yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that it
Speaker 1: for your your bad things? Yeah, that was it for
Speaker 1: my bad thing. So that's that's the general low down
Speaker 1: on on proxy avoidance systems. All right, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were thinking of it from my
Speaker 1: point of view, the one where I was talking about
Speaker 1: your behind the corporate firewall and it's really annoying that
Speaker 1: you can't get to your Gmail. Um, there were a
Speaker 1: couple of things that that might work for you. Um.
Speaker 1: Now this is an entirely different thing. Keeping your mind,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is you being restricted by a uh
Speaker 1: tight firewall. I'm looking for a way to fool the
Speaker 1: proxy into letting you through. Well, uh, simple way to
Speaker 1: do that might be just to add an S to
Speaker 1: the h T t P. A lot of proxies, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, corporate proxies are looking for HTTP calling
Speaker 1: slash slash, and the website you're looking for, well, they
Speaker 1: may not be looking for a secure version of that site,
Speaker 1: and you may simply be able to fool the the
Speaker 1: proxy server into letting you through simply by adding an
Speaker 1: S to your hdt P. I'm not saying it'll work.
Speaker 1: And again, this is another version of it's probably not
Speaker 1: necessarily a good idea to do this yourself. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could get caught surfing some site that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: at work and get fired, So I wouldn't advocate doing that. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: I know that some people have used, uh, the Google
Speaker 1: language tools to get through things. Translating English to English
Speaker 1: will let people through because it fools the fools the
Speaker 1: website into thinking it's actually using Google for a useful purpose,
Speaker 1: until of course they find out and block the English
Speaker 1: to English translation as part of the u r L.
Speaker 1: Because these services use your l's to block. I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're putting those in specifically, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why you can get through to Pandora for two
Speaker 1: months and then somebody goes too much bandwidth and they
Speaker 1: cut and they cut you off. You're talking like you
Speaker 1: speak from experience here, Chris I mean, you're and I
Speaker 1: just know that some people have done this, and I
Speaker 1: also know that some people have in order to get
Speaker 1: through instant messaging protocols. They find out they download a
Speaker 1: multi protocol client like a Pigeon or trillion or something
Speaker 1: like that digsby, and uh, they find out that their
Speaker 1: their corporate UM I T people have blocked the servers
Speaker 1: that go through there. Well, actually they're blocking the ports
Speaker 1: in those cases probably, And if you do a search online,
Speaker 1: you might find out that there are other ports that
Speaker 1: use another server's chat. Servers that use the same protocols,
Speaker 1: like for example, I c Q might use a number
Speaker 1: of different servers and ports, and if you, you know,
Speaker 1: play around with that, you might find out that, well,
Speaker 1: some of them aren't blocked. Not that I would advocate
Speaker 1: doing that losing your job, because that would be terrible.
Speaker 1: That would I would not like that, and I would
Speaker 1: have corporate parents. Wow. But that's uh, that see that
Speaker 1: that was the kind of thing I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: I do know people who were sty fold by that
Speaker 1: lack of access to fun and games during work hours. Sure,
Speaker 1: And I should also point out that proxy sites tend
Speaker 1: to you know, they tend to come and go pretty
Speaker 1: quickly because Uh, it turns out that a lot of
Speaker 1: companies don't like people accessing proxy sites for the same
Speaker 1: reason that they put the firewall up in the first place. Really,
Speaker 1: so um, often they'll block access to those. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, for everyone that you lose access to,
Speaker 1: it seems like two more pop up. Again. It's one
Speaker 1: of those issues where you definitely have to do your
Speaker 1: homework and make sure that whichever one you go to
Speaker 1: is a reputable as far as that goes proxy site. UM.
Speaker 1: And we should also point out that there are cases
Speaker 1: where these sites have been very very important for people
Speaker 1: who are let's say, overseas. Um. It turns out that
Speaker 1: a lot of journalists in China have used proxy sites
Speaker 1: in order to get information out of that country because
Speaker 1: they're so restrictive. I mean, it's the great our Wall
Speaker 1: of China is famous for restricting information in and out
Speaker 1: of that country, and without things like proxy sites, Uh,
Speaker 1: it would make it much more difficult for information to
Speaker 1: pass across that firewall. So I mean, it's um, it's
Speaker 1: it's a sticky issue. It's one that we actually debated
Speaker 1: on whether or not we should even address this. But
Speaker 1: then the information is out there and people want to
Speaker 1: know about it. And really, I think our our listeners are,
Speaker 1: on the whole, are very responsible and upstanding lot, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you say, I'd say so, and they probably realized too that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's fun to talk about some of
Speaker 1: these things, but when I talk when you talk about
Speaker 1: losing your job or having your access restricted or you know,
Speaker 1: getting into llegal trouble, that's another thing entirely. You don't
Speaker 1: want to mess with that lightly, right, right, So, so, Tim,
Speaker 1: We're sure you were just you know, curious, and we
Speaker 1: hope that we've satisfied your curiosity with this discussion. Did
Speaker 1: you have any I'm I'm dry, excellent, fantastic, So I'm
Speaker 1: glad we were able to to to clear that up
Speaker 1: for you. Tim. If any of you have any questions,
Speaker 1: you can write us at podcasts at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. We love getting that email, so definitely right in.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about the Internet,
Speaker 1: the web, how the web is different from the Internet,
Speaker 1: all of these topics you can find right now at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And we'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com brought
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