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Access restricted web sites using Google language tools service as a
A little tutorial found on the italian site www.manuali.net inspired me for this hack. That tutorial suggests to translate a webpage, using Google translator, to access it even if restricted.

It worked fine but something else was needed... why translate?!

Ok, let's start from the beginning. We all know that Google is more than a search engine; we do use it as provider for email, mapping, news and many other services. Google is now also a free proxy service. Proxy is a device that stands between a PC and the internet, providing all the connections to the world wide web. What a proxy does is to receive all data from a requested site, so when you access web pages all data come from proxy.

What's the purpose for Google as a proxy? We often use office/school/university connections, usually those services are set to provide more safety, blocking the access to undesidered web sites (the "black list"). What you can do now is use Google translator service (language tools) as a proxy to bypass the restrictions set for our connection!

You just need to type the following URL:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpai ... ensite.com
(www.forbiddensite.com stands for the URL you need to go to...)

What you'll get is the translation (english to english!) of the page you want to see... your connection is directed to a google.com page so this page won't be blocked (would be blocked only with google.com on the black list), no matter what's the content.

Notice that the URL has been a little hacked because the parameter "langpair"(1) is set to "en|en" (english/english) so the page is processed by Google but you can keep the original language of the page (no need to translate!). If you need another language (e.g. french) you just need to set the parameter langpair to "fr|fr" and you'll be able to read french pages in french!

A couple of examples:

english... http://www.google.com/translate?langpai ... reilly.com

italian (my own homepage!)... http://www.google.com/translate?langpai ... rvista.org

Last but not least: if you use this trick, you're not sure to protect your privacy, this kind of connection lets you see blacklisted pages but doesn't hide your IP address. Just go to http://www.google.com/translate?langpai ... ismyip.com to see your IP is not hidden... .


I don't need this personally but I understand that a few office bound memebrs tend to have blocked sites, especially rebellious anti religion sites

Just wait till people start adding eaither google, or just google language tools to the list of blocked sites

does it allow you to follow links and view media and pictures?

We ran into this at work last year when kids started looking at blocked sites using the AltaVista Babel fish.

...quiet you! Giving away all my secrets...

Yeah, I figured this out back in high school.

Zadius wrote:Yeah, I figured this out back in high school.

I wish some one had told me about this back in school, it would have been very useful because about the only thing the network did not block was porn. Though my school did block goggle for a time and that’s why I can tell you the Mongolian goggle is Goggle.mn (they only blocked the major ones) so maybe some people did no this.

Though I don’t see it as that useful I mean think about it, this may allow you to access the forbidden site but it would not stop any software tracking your internet use. When I was looking around my school network I found a file in a hidden folder in my network called Proof and it had all these URL’s I had accessed and a load of my email addresses. Not to mention standard tracking like that used by Net Nanny or undeletable history.

Glimmervoid wrote:

Zadius wrote:Yeah, I figured this out back in high school.

I wish some one had told me about this back in school, it would have been very useful because about the only thing the network did not block was porn. Though my school did block goggle for a time and that’s why I can tell you the Mongolian goggle is Goggle.mn (they only blocked the major ones) so maybe some people did no this.

Though I don’t see it as that useful I mean think about it, this may allow you to access the forbidden site but it would not stop any software tracking your internet use. When I was looking around my school network I found a file in a hidden folder in my network called Proof and it had all these URL’s I had accessed and a load of my email addresses. Not to mention standard tracking like that used by Net Nanny or undeletable history.

My highschool had some monitoring software that warned you that you were being monitored every time you logged on. The strange thing is, anyone who logged on could view the list of what pages anyone visited (even the teachers). So a lot of time was spent with students browsing through those logs. Not that we ever found anything interesting there.

Also, the blocking software worked by, among other things, blocking urls if they had specfic text strings in them. This would prevent google being used as a proxy if a site was already blocked.

Eh, just set up a computer at home as a proxy server and use portable firefox, or use SSH's dynamic port forwarding so the server you connect to can be a proxy. The latter doesn't seem to work w/ plain firefox though for some odd reason...

A brilliant scheme indeed... pity it doesn't work on thin client terminals though.