Memories of proxies past
April 20, 2006A CNET article titled Kids outsmart Web filters brought back many memories:
Web proxies are almost as old as the Internet itself as a means to route Web traffic through an anonymous domain name or circumvent content-filters, and they’ve long been the territory of corporate networks and the tech savvy seeking privacy. Nowadays, an increasing number of teenagers are setting up proxies on home PCs to sidestep school filtering traps, in addition to using free proxies set up on the Web, according to technologists at schools and at content-filtering technology providers.
Back in high school I believe my class was among the first to go toe-to-toe on a daily basis with the school’s network administrator. For a long time there weren’t any problems and many a lunch hour was spent in nerd bliss with some friends on a bank of computers playing Utopia until it was blocked. Then someone discovered that if you changed a number in the web browser proxy address you could access any site (the number changed occasionally and quickly spread by word-of-mouth).
Later I took a class from the network admin. We’d provide free labor in exchange for getting a quarter of a CISCO certification. Also we mostly played games and didn’t do any work. Kids these days setting up their own proxies with their “actual computer knowledge” don’t know how good they have it.
This flashback has been brought to you by OK Soda.