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Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy

server at home!
It is getting bizzare. Many corporates erroneously blocked Gmail since it got reported as a virus! On top
of it, all are busy blocking Orkut and Myspace. I had written a recent piece on accesing banned Websites.
Most of the methods mentioned there don’t work in corporate networks since network admins are also
getting smart

One of the methods I mentioned was number 8 – Your own proxy server. This is superior to all other methods
due to a couple of reasons. First free public proxies are never safe. Your personal and private information can
be compromised in these servers. Also these will get blocked by the proxy software eventually. Another reason
is that using your own proxy server gives you complete control. You can encrypt your traffic so that no one
knows what is being browsed.

I will look at setting up a Http proxy server on a Windows XP machine. Please note that this article won’t be
covering the case when you use proxy server or WiFi at home. I will be writing another post about such
scenarios later.

Step 1 – Download and install Perl distribution

Download Windows x86 version of Active Perl from ActiveState site. Install with default configuration except
the directory which I recommend to be set to “C:\usr\”.

Step 2 – Download and install Apache server

Download latest Apache server for Windows (2.2.3 as of today) from http://httpd.apache.org/. Install it under
any folder with port 80 as the HTTP port . Setting port to 80 is important since most corporates only allow port
80 access. If you get any error in binding to port 80, probably you have something else listening on it.

Step 3 – Configure Apache server

Now we need to configure Apache to enable CGI.

Locate #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi in httpd.conf (located inside apache subfolder conf) and remove the hash
(#) in front.

Locate the “you set DocumentRoot to” string in httpd.conf. Under that you will see Option directive. Change it
to Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews

Step 4 – Download and install CGIProxy (nph-proxy)

Download CGIProxy (nph-proxy) from http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.cgi.txt. Rename
the file to nph-proxy.cgi and copy it to Apache’s document root (htdocs). Now change the first line in nph-
proxy.cgi to #!C:\usr\perl\bin\perl.exe

Start Apache from the bin folder (httpd.exe). Now open a browser session and point to http://localhost/nph-
proxy.cgi. If everything is ok you should see the following screen.

http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/12/21/accessing-blocked-web... 1/1/2011
Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at h... Page 2 of 7

Find the IP address of your home connection. This can be viewed by typing ipconfig on the command prompt.
Now from the office machine access http://IP ADDRESS/. You should see the proxy form which we saw
above. Happy orkutting!

Note : This will need more steps if you have a WIFI network at home (port forwarding). I will cover these
issues in the next post.

Further Reading
Top 10 ways of accessing banned web sites.

Posted under Internet Tips, Software Tips · December 21, 2006 · 23 Comments

Comments
23 Responses to “Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at home!”

1. puko says:
January 3, 2007 at 10:54 pm

some isps block hosting on port 80

so you should host on port 443 instead

2. d says:
January 25, 2007 at 12:25 am

thanks

http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/12/21/accessing-blocked-web... 1/1/2011
Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at h... Page 3 of 7

3. Ender says:
February 20, 2007 at 4:44 am

how do u set up access control for this proxy server?

4. Avinash.N says:
February 26, 2007 at 5:43 pm

I have tried so many times to open an orkut by using different

proxy server,but i have not found any powerful proxy server yet.
So,please help me.How to open the orkut using proxy server.

5. rash says:
March 13, 2007 at 8:38 am

i cant login to orkut page from my home it shows page canot be displayed

6. Anonymous says:
March 24, 2007 at 2:57 am

i canot open the orkut page from my home it shows page canot be displayed

7. Anonymous says:
March 24, 2007 at 2:57 am

i canot open the orkut page from my home it shows acces url is blocked

8. Anonymous says:
March 24, 2007 at 2:59 am

i cant open the site orkut from my home iam in staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the
requested URL is not allowed

9. Anonymous says:
March 24, 2007 at 3:01 am

i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the
requested URL is not allowed

10. Anonymous says:

March 24, 2007 at 3:01 am

i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the
requested URL is not allowed.plz help me to join okut

11. Anonymous says:

March 24, 2007 at 3:02 am

i cant open the site orkut from my home iam staying here in ksa(Saudi Arabia)and it shows Access to the
requested URL is not allowed.plz help me to join orkut

12. Anonymous says:

March 28, 2007 at 4:42 pm

I believe that Saudi Arabia has been banned from the internet…

13. Anonymous says:

http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/12/21/accessing-blocked-web... 1/1/2011
Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at h... Page 4 of 7

April 5, 2007 at 7:27 pm

our school blocks sites by category, and one of those happens to be annonymizers. Is there a way i can get
an in-direct link to these files?

14. Anonymous says:

April 7, 2007 at 11:32 am

I’m almost there, when I open the page in the last step it says that I don’t have permission to access the
page. Any ideas? Thanks

15. Abhishek Jain says:

April 19, 2007 at 5:09 pm

hey,

thnx for the input but this doesnt support HTTPS ie. SSL….and most of the mails are now https only…like
yahoo and gmail..can u suggest something tht supports https also…

16. BSKU says:

August 3, 2007 at 1:28 pm

Has anyone found a home proxy server similar to this that does support accessing HTTPS sites such as
gmail, financial institutions, etc…? What programs/scripting do Megaproxy.com and the-cloak.com
utilize?
I have Apache & CGIProxy working fine with an SSL connection, however it does not allow access to
HTTPS sites through the proxy, please advise. Thank you for the instructions above and any future help.

17. branden says:

September 22, 2007 at 5:16 am

plz give me a list of websites for proxies plz or my myspace email is bambotta2x@yahoo.com

18. Witho says:

April 1, 2008 at 9:06 am

Seems like the ISP block “Everything” but google.com and yahoo.com. But it will allow anything contain
“google.com”. How can I change the server name to something like “server.google.com” or anything
contain “google.com”? Thank you.

19. Rakesh says:

September 13, 2008 at 8:37 am

I have the same problem.

I can browse google only in My computer and can download google products from google.( like google
earth, picasa,etc)
But I can not open other sites directly eg. http://www.live.com OR http://www.yahoo.com OR any thing
except http://www.google.com and Some site I can access some mozilla and useless sites in day to day life.

Please help I have paid Rs.395 for the Mobile Office. and Now Airtel Coustemer Service does not
Responing. eeeeeeaaaaa!! I totally disapointed after manual settings of Mobile Office.

Mobile Browser is Wap Browser So I use Opera Mini So I can browse Web sites in Mobile But Why not in
Computer.

Settings in my Mobile are:

http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/12/21/accessing-blocked-web... 1/1/2011
Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at h... Page 5 of 7

Mobile Office
http://www.google.com
proxy blank
port 8080
APN airtelgprs.com

Can you guess the problem

Is it http problem
Is it IP or site blocking problem
Is this my computer problem

I don\’t have such issue with other net service providers like BSNL (It means the problem is not in my
computer)

Plz help or just guess the problems or give Some website address to get answer

My Email is VistaLover2008@hotmail.com

Thank You in advance !!

20. sandy says:

September 19, 2008 at 9:55 pm

hi
, i am not able to open my gmail in my office.i know my admin has blocked that .i know the admin
password. but i dont know how to make changes to allow gmail in my system.
pls mail me how to do

21. rr says:
March 16, 2009 at 5:29 pm

everything worked great except step 4 where you say to change the first line to #!C:\usr\perl\bin\perl.exe
For me to get it to work my first line needed to be #!C:\usr\bin\perl

22. Mike68 says:

November 18, 2009 at 2:27 pm

When I rename nph-proxy.cgi to something else it doesn’t work.

—
Server error!

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.

Error message:
malformed header from script. Bad header=HTTP/1.1 200 OK: a.cgi

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

–

When I change the name back it works fine again with no problem.
I really want to rename it because I’m sure my college will block it with the word proxy in the file name.

23. ym says:
December 24, 2010 at 10:58 pm

http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/12/21/accessing-blocked-web... 1/1/2011
Accessing Blocked Websites – Use your own proxy server at h... Page 6 of 7

hi.
when i vist http://localhost/nph-proxy.cgi, it shows:

“Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /nph-proxy.cgi on this server.”

how to fix it?

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