How to install the Circumventor program, which gets around all Web-blocking software
This page describes how to install the "Circumventor" program, which can be used to get around all Web blocking programs, from the "Great Firewall of China" to the Net Nanny program on someone's home computer.
However, Please Note!! You don't actually install the Circumventor on the computer that is blocked from accessing Web sites. You, or a friend of yours, has to install the Circumventor on some other machine which is not censored. Once your friend has installed the Circumventor on their machine, the install program will give them a URL that points to their new Circumventor. They can then give that URL to you, and you can use the URL on your censored machine to bypass Web censorship.
For example, if you want to get around Web blocking at work, don't install the Circumventor on your work computer. Install the Circumventor on your home computer. When the installer is done, it will give you the URL for your new Circumventor, and then you write that URL down and take it in with you to work, where you can use that URL to bypass the Web blocking there. Similarly, if you're in China and blocked from accessing certain sites, don't install the Circumventor on a machine in China; instead, get a friend to install it outside China, and then they can send you the URL that you can use to access banned sites.
How to install the Circumventor
The machine where you install the Circumventor must have a fast Internet connection (not dial-up), and it must be running Windows XP or 2000. (If you don't know how to find this out, then you suck. OK, you don't suck, but you probably shouldn't be installing the Circumventor, because it does require a little bit of knowledge to run it -- it's not really for beginners.) Also, once you install the Circumventor on your machine, the Circumventor will only work as long as you have your machine turned on and connected to the Internet, so you should only install it on machines that are online more or less all the time. (If you disconnect from the Internet and reconnect later, the Circumventor may start working again, but only if you have what's called a "static IP address".)
To install:
1. First, click this link to open a new window, which will tell you whether or not your machine is able to receive incoming connections. (When your browser says "The publisher cannot be determined" and asks if you want to install the Java applet, say Yes. In technical terms, the applet opens a "listening" connection on port 1238 on your computer and then tests whether outside computers are able to connect to it.) If your machine is able to receive incoming connections, then proceed.
2. Download ActivePerl from this link and install it. It must be installed to C:\Perl (this should be the default). Accept all of the default options.
3. Download OpenSA 2.0.2 beta from this link and install it. Again, it must be installed to C:\OpenSA (this should be the default). Accept all of the default options. (If you get to a screen titled "Server Information" and it doesn't have values filled in for "Network Domain", "Server Name" and "Administrator's Email Address", just fill in these boxes with made-up random values -- the Circumventor doesn't use them.)
4. Download the circumventor-setup.exe program from this link and run it.
If the circumventor-setup.exe program succeeds, it will display an "It's ready!" page at the end of the install. If it fails, it will create a file circumventor-setup-log.txt -- send that file to
bennett@peacefire.org and we will try to figure out what went wrong.
Happy surfing!
Special thanks
This project was made possible by the existence of the following programs, which are generously given away for free by their authors:
* OpenSA, the Open Server Architecture project, by Daniel Reichenbach -- the Web server that encrypts communications traffic and forms the backbone of the circumventor.
* CGIProxy by James Marshall -- the CGI script which fetches blocked Web pages.
* Windows NT/2000/XP Utilities by Luis Carlos Castro Skertchly.
* Perl by Larry Wall.