How to visit TSP when the web site is baned in your country

[Wojciech Majda]

Hi guys, I just wanted to share my thoughts about how to listen to podcast when the web site is baned in your country.

First of all you can add TSP to your RSS reader (such as google reader). You can listen to podcast. Unfortunately you can't use forum (because you can't enter TSP web page).
Second method is using so called "proxa sites" - if you visit that web site you can put URL address of TSP and then you can enjoy TSP
If you are registering to TSP forum you must also put activation URL address into "proxa site"

There are few this type of sites such as:
http://proxy.org/
or
http://www.proxyoutube.info/

I hope that helped. Maybe Jack can mention that in podcast, so other folks from countries where TSP is baned can listen to show and contribute to forum.

Wojciech from Poland where TSP is "unavalable"

[archer]

Welcome Wojciech! Good post! +1 to you.

[Hare of Caerbannog]

Cool.
We have people in Poland!
Welcome Wojciech!

[Tommy Jefferson]

Wojciech from Poland where TSP is "unavalable"

Why is TSP unavailable in Poland?

[Docwatmo]

One little trick that may help.  (This works against many "Filter" packages, because of the way DNS gets processed).

try adding additional www. in front of it.

www.www.thesurvivalpodcast.com
www.www.www.thesurvivalpodcast.com

The local school discovered this after they blocked facebook.  The kids discovered they could just keep this up till they got through.  Finally had to modify the actuall DNS source to fix it.

[Wojciech Majda]

Why is TSP unavailable in Poland?

I don't have clue. Theoretically we don't have any official "baned pages" stuff. It's first blocked site I met. 

[archer]

Wonder if the IP is in some left over block of banned IP's that was sold.

[Roswell]

We need to get this info to China!

[ntexastom]

I had this problem last visit I made to China for work. I have another trip in Sept so I will check it again.Site was OK in Hong Kong but main land was locked down, no google, no facebook, no survival podcast.

[Ewok]

Thanks for the info!

I live in Poland and I signed up on the forum back in December of 08' but then, around the summer of 09' I couldn't access the site. Just a few days ago I tried to get here and, wonder of wonders, I got access! I guess the government instituted a TSP 'Perestroika'.

[Roknrandy]

Welcome back Ewok!

[soupbone]

I'm certainly no computer expert, but automatic monitors could be picking up on certain key words, in this case "survival". Try accessing Le Survivaliste, a French website (by our old friend, volwest) and see if you can get through.

I understand that Europeans have a different view of the preparedness movement than we do here (wack jobs in the woods with guns, waiting for armageddon) so your government might be lumping this site with other less than desirable sites.

As far as Doc's advice, "try adding additional www. in front of it.", I'd be careful. As I said, the monitors pick up on key words, no mtter how they are hidden. A proxy might best meet your needs.

Weso?ych ?wi?t i szcz??liwego Nowego Roku,

soupbone

[Mr. Bill]

Weso?ych ?wi?t i szcz??liwego Nowego Roku,

That's another thing we need to fix here -- allowing non-ASCII characters.  I'm adding it to my to-do lisst.

[kc9eci]

Jack should set up a mirror for TSP called something like fuzzykittens.com

[archer]

Jack should set up a mirror for TSP called something like fuzzykittens.com

Hm, how about 'inflatablegoats.com'?

[soupbone]

Is it feasable? How much would it cost? How technically difficult would it be?

sb

[kc9eci]

inflatablegoats.com would be a great mirror.  Mirroring a site is simple and really shouldn't cost a lot.

[archer]

well, there are the back end parts of the site to worry about which would make it more difficult. i wonder if just using a DNS redirect to tsp would work for this.

[Docwatmo]

There are some things that could be done with DNS re routing but keyword scanners would still block the sites.  I think the cheapest/easiest would to proxy it using a java browser tool within a website.  The parent website would be a simple 1 page thing hosted almost anywhere.  Then there would be an internal java web browser running on the site then makes the actual connection to the TSP Site.  Kind of a poor mans proxy so to speak. I've never done it but i've heard about it.   Works even better with some real basic encryption (Keeps the keyword spotters out of it.

I also remember running across a tool that allowed a proxy to snapshot a website and compress it into zip file and then email you the zip file.  Read only no posting though.

If I ever get and real free time, I might look into this again.  Thinking like June 2012 sounds reasonable LOL

[ag2]

There are some things that could be done with DNS re routing but keyword scanners would still block the sites.  I think the cheapest/easiest would to proxy it using a java browser tool within a website. 

I think Doc's got it right.  Java-based nested browser should do the trick.

Does anyone know what happened to our ability to go back to a previous post and edit for spelling?  I found a typo and can't fix it.  That's just kills the perfectionist in me!  But forcing myself to let it go builds character.  So maybe it's good for me to recognize what's important and what's not important during these orbits around the sun.

[Docwatmo]

There is a time limit on editing your posts. (I believe its set somewhere between 2 and 4 hours). 

[Pathfinder]

Most of the filters I am familiar with use categories rather than keywords (or maybe in addition to). In those cases where I have been blocked, it is always presented as a violation of a category, such as "Social Networking" which was a no-no at my former company. You can black- or white-list specific sites as well.

I have a Virgin Mobile 3G USB dongle I used when the company shut down the free, outside-the-firewall wi-fi network. I actually got blocked on it one time using email, when I was informed my public IP was blacklisted for spamming. I worked with spamhaus and Virgin to get it unblocked, but what a pain.

[archer]

if you have access to a linux system you can use ssh tools to tunnel IM/Firefox though a ssh tunnel.

http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/azul/firefox-ssh-tunnel

[MrThirteen]

Need to find out where the block is being administered.  Is it from his local connection to the internet (i.e. a public wifi, a school network, a building complex private network, etc.)  Then go up the chain.  It seem strange that a country such as Poland would be blocking this site.

If it is the country blocking it, the question would be why? I wasn't aware of Poland taking a page out of China's book on Internet monitoring and control.

The linux option is a good one.  You can rent VPS linux setups and Proxy your connections through it.  The rentals are usually less than $10 US a month.

And with a little know how you can have a complete virtual connection that acts seemless to you and your network.  You would just program a redirect for any sites you find blocked to go through your proxy and then it would be seemless from then on. (As long as you keep that VPS updated.)

When I have time, (Rare commodity these days), I want to setup a VPS linux box that will allow me to create that semi automatic proxy.

Again, when I have time.

[archer]

When I have time, (Rare commodity these days), I want to setup a VPS linux box that will allow me to create that semi automatic proxy.

Again, when I have time.

I use myhostings.com's VPS system. I had my own server @ a co-lo, but that because too expensive.

[Ada]

Without de-railing the thread too much!

But do you think the govt. monitors varies text strings, I was talking to a friend through messenger, about if you wanted to own ammunition, you would have to drive to Poland and smuggle it in, and all of the sudden I got this feeling, oh wow, what if the govt. was keeping tab on certain phrases and words you send cross the net. Can't be so difficult to do, and now I feel so afraid about what I said later in the conversation!

You think they actually monitor our web/word usage?

[archer]

Without de-railing the thread too much!

But do you think the govt. monitors varies text strings, I was talking to a friend through messenger, about if you wanted to own ammunition, you would have to drive to Poland and smuggle it in, and all of the sudden I got this feeling, oh wow, what if the govt. was keeping tab on certain phrases and words you send cross the net. Can't be so difficult to do, and now I feel so afraid about what I said later in the conversation!

You think they actually monitor our web/word usage?

you can encrypt instant messenger software so it makes it harder for outsiders to read the text flow. i use this all the time.

[Nightshade]

There are a lot of different methods that blocking applications use to filter sites, and many ways to get around them.  Some have been mentioned in the thread but I didn't see anyone mention TOR.  If you all haven't looked at that, TOR is an interesting anonymizing system that bounces your traffic through multiple servers around the world encrypting it in several layers.  This prevents the intermediate systems from seeing your traffic and your source is hidden from the site you visit.  It also works well in getting around a lot of blocking systems that get thrown up in countries or company/school networks.  For firefox you can get it as an add on (tor button). 

Alternativity, there are a few other quick tips:
1) search the site in google and view the cached page.  When you want to search only a specific site in google, example: we want to search TSP for solar power....
  in the google search bar type:       Site:thesurvivalpodcats.com solar power
This restricts the search to that site only.  Any results that seem interesting, open up the cached link for that page.  This gets you most of the details of the site, while not having to access the site.  Some blocking tools block google cache views though.

2) look up the IP address for the site and access it that way.  Some networks and providers may block sites by dns by giving bad information to redirect you elsewhere.  If dns is not blocked, search google's dns (from the DOS prompt:  nslookup thesurvivalpodcast.com 8.8.8.8) or use a dns lookup tool on the web (http://network-tools.com/nslook/) to get the ip of the site.  Then just browse to the IP: http://174.36.118.25.  This won't always work, especially if there are more than one website hosted at that IP address.

[Docwatmo]

You think they actually monitor our web/word usage?

I know the answer to this is Yes,  I worked on the analog stuff 18 years ago that did this on voice and early internet/modem communications.  Considering the power of modern computing.  I'm absolutely positive the early monitoring has gotten far better in the digital age.  Is it 100% of clear text now?  I don't know, maybe.  But my guess is more bots are used to crawl the web rather than direct monitoring that was used back then.

I posted about it a while back.   http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=13968.msg155753#msg155753

[ModernSurvival]

On China I get emails often from people in China that say we are not banned there and yet emails from others that say we are not, this is not limited to Hong Kong vs. the main land.