How to defeat blocked ports with a news reader

You could use a VPN, either a free or fee-based public service (e.g., HotspotVPN), or if you’re lucky, find a friend outside your local network willing to setup and let you use his/her VPN server. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel within which your access to various protocols and services would be hidden. The only thing your ISP sees is your connection to the VPN (he probably wouldn't even know it's a VPN server, just that you remain connected to that particular site for long periods). Of course, that assumes your ISP doesn’t block the VPN ports either.

Another possibility is running over the TOR network. This isn't really a VPN, but an onion router intended to increase your anonymity. But it has the same effect as a VPN by tunneling your access to protocols and services. It provides anonymity because unlike a VPN which is just a single connection, TOR creates a series of connections, one layered inside the other. It’s based on the theory that the more connections required to reach the destination, the harder it is to backtrack to the original source. While it works well for these purposes, the downside is that it’s typically much slower than a VPN due to the overhead associated w/ all those connections. But again, it has the effect of obscuring your activities. Another limitation of TOR is that you have to configure individual services w/ the TOR’s local proxy (whereas a VPN is typically transparent to your applications), and not all applications allow you to configure them w/a proxy (many do, but not all).