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Bypass Great Firewall of China; Watch Hulu

by - source: Tom's Hardware US

Are you worried about people snooping on you while you're surfing the web?

Maybe you're at an office and the IT department has locked down your favorite time sucking website. Or maybe you're at the airport, or a coffee shop. Or more so, maybe you're living in China and a site you frequent has landed on the government's list of no-no sites. In that case, what would you do?

Enter Hotspot Shield by AnchorFree. It's a little application that frees you from firewalls and content censorship. It even allows you to watch Hulu outside of the U.S.

For those who already know of HotSpot shield, you may know that it displays a little ad on your browser--but it's easily disabled. However, a small ad is a tiny price to pay to able to reach the content you want, when you want, where you want.

Check out the little app here.

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mrubermonkey 03/30/2009 9:56 AM
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jfplopes 03/30/2009 10:09 AM
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But quality proxies are hard to find. This application assures you'll have an US ip and is reasonably fast.

Silluete 03/30/2009 10:52 AM
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Nice, now just pray no People's Republic of China officer read this and decide to block this app

neiroatopelcc 03/30/2009 11:04 AM
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The software ensures you don't end up using a proxy that isn't secure. There's no point trying to run from the chinese censorship just to use a proxy in russia that collects passwords

San Pedro 03/30/2009 11:14 AM
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I tried to use hotspot shield on vista 64 here in Japan but couldn't get it to work, for the same reason mentioned in the article, I wanted to watch hulu. Maybe I'll try again.

outacontrolpimp 03/30/2009 11:14 AM
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Silluete :
Nice, now just pray no People's Republic of China officer read this and decide to block this app




its going to be on torent sites, blocking the site wouldnt help

tuannguyen 03/30/2009 11:17 AM
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mrubermonkey :
So I take it Tuan has never heard of a proxy before. Its really simple. In Firefox go to Tools->Options...->Advanced->Network->Settings...->Manual proxy configuration:Then enter your HTTP Proxy and Port and you are good to go. Google up some proxy lists and you can surf without the need for ads. Or maybe this is just another Tom's advertisement for some service right. Hope they pay well.



Hi mrubermonkey -

As a matter of fact, I have used proxies many times, and I even wrote the word "proxy" in the story's URL.

I'm happy you know how to setup a proxy. Some others may not have known and may prefer something like this for a quick fix.

You made two big assumptions about me that are way out of line. I've done Linux and Windows network administration for years, and no, AnchorFree didn't pay me a cent for this article. I stumbled onto it today actually.

Not sure why it's so offensive that I share something I found interesting with the community.

/ Tuan

svenolsen 03/30/2009 11:31 AM
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mrubermonkey :
So I take it Tuan has never heard of a proxy before. Its really simple. In Firefox go to Tools->Options...->Advanced->Network->Settings...->Manual proxy configuration:Then enter your HTTP Proxy and Port and you are good to go. Google up some proxy lists and you can surf without the need for ads. Or maybe this is just another Tom's advertisement for some service right. Hope they pay well.



i may not agree with tuan's mac articles from time to time but you sir are being a douchebag.

dmuir 03/30/2009 1:47 PM
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But it's not a proxy. It's VPN based setup. Hulu used to work through a proxy, but not any more, otherwise I'd just tunnel through my web host. I've had limited success with Hotspot Shield from Japan. Most of the time, it's unable to provide enough bandwidth to watch videos without pausing every minute or two. Also, there's no Linux version, so that makes it pretty much useless to me.

romans11 03/30/2009 2:48 PM
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I had to laugh at this. I tried the link, my employer has the website blocked. I tried to Google proxy lists, every site it brought up that I clicked on, my employer blocked. Guess I'm still stuck not being able to check my email or watch videos at work.

neiroatopelcc 03/30/2009 2:53 PM
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romans11 :
I had to laugh at this. I tried the link, my employer has the website blocked. I tried to Google proxy lists, every site it brought up that I clicked on, my employer blocked. Guess I'm still stuck not being able to check my email or watch videos at work.



Try checking your internet explorer (or equivalent) if you have a proxy active. Tools - Internet Options - Connections - Lan settings. If your employer uses an isa server, and isn't too skilled in the use of such, you can bypass it simply by turning off stuff in that tab. Also you might try to use the ip instead of the name ( start - run - cmd - nslookup whatever.site.you.need.com )

ADM-86 03/30/2009 4:02 PM
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its not working for me at all...anyone having the same problem?

crystal_tech 03/30/2009 5:01 PM
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sounds like some people at work have just blocked the dns server from resovling. try doing a whois and just enter the ip number for that website insted of the dns. who know it might work.

LuxZg 03/30/2009 5:36 PM
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If a corporate network is well managed, there won't be much use because:
- you won't be able to download it
- usb keys are blocked
- you can't install anything since youre not admin

..and so on... But it's still a nice thing for people outside US that can't access some of their sites or get showed to wait in lines and so on. Maybe you won't be able to watch Hulu, but you'll be able to access other content more easily.

I won't use it cos I don't like small ad-based apps all over my PCs .. and besides - I'm admin, so I know how to use proxies, and I have no problems with corporate firewalls :D

anamaniac 03/31/2009 3:11 AM
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For me the issue if a school firewall.
However since everything is blocked from Internet Explorer, I can just use Firefox on USB. ;)

San Pedro 03/31/2009 9:07 AM
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ADM-86 :
its not working for me at all...anyone having the same problem?



If you're on 64bit OS it doesn't work. You have to use work around which you can find using google.

idisarmu 03/31/2009 1:20 PM
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I had hotspot shield... I used it for sites that were USA only- it's quite nice... but ads piss me off. As a result, I don't use it anymore.

Anonymous 05/10/2009 8:49 AM
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i use freedur.com, best I've found so far.

neiroatopelcc 05/10/2009 1:07 PM
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you've found what?

Yijun 03/22/2010 8:23 PM
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Well, you may want to take a look of the VPN service provided at www.officevpn.net

OfficeVPN can bypass company's or school's proxy/content filter, home's ISP, and secure all your data with 1024 bits SSL encryption. If you are interested, you may request a free trial account and see how it works!

neiroatopelcc 03/22/2010 9:07 PM
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internet cloaker's got a similar offer in addition to their proxy sites - using openvpnportable

vpning 12/04/2010 2:23 AM
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I think that VPN services may be free for the user to leave the trap hackers
Difficult to find such good service as http://www.VPNing.com. Of course it is not free

neiroatopelcc 12/04/2010 11:00 AM
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identitycloaker is a better option. but both are detectable by gateway software such as tmg, so that wouldn't truely solve anything if china wants it not to.

Anonymous 11/09/2011 6:11 PM
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HotSpot Shield, like most free VPNs has a 2 GB limit . Also, most proxies do not work from China. There are some good paid VPN services out there. I used http://www.sunvpn.com/, quite happy with them.

alex7xl 01/11/2012 12:20 PM
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Publis proxies too slow, unsecure and unstable.
The best way to overcome the Firewall is using VPN connection to another country.
For example http://vpnprivacy.com/best-vpn-for-china.html or other VPN serivce let you to do that.
It's more stable and security (all traffic is encrypted) way to unblock all websites you need.

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