How to view Flash/video with anonymous proxies?

Question

I've been looking at free proxies from various lists on the net. Nearly every one has a box to put in a URL to browse using the proxy. The pages load (and whatismyip.com gives an IP different to my own), but no video seems to work. Even when the checkboxes for "disable javascript" and "remove objects" are unchecked, no Flash ever loads.

I've also tried adding the sites as proxies directly into the browser, but then nothing loads at all. For example in Firefox I open "Connection settings" (from Options > Advanced > Network) and put the domain name, e.g. "example.com" under "automatic config..." or "manual config..." with port 80, it never works.

Do I need to put something else in those boxes? Is there a better way to view Flash/video with a proxy?

Solution 1

There are several methods of doing this. Using web proxys' wont work because they simply copy the site content (html, css, javascript and etc) into server ram or temporary files, however wont copy flash content because it dosent use the flash object and downloads the video.

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SSH Tunneling is good, but can be annoying to setup (getting a VPS, Shared hosting with SSH or a dedicated server will make this easier). The only problem that might occur is port 22 being blocked, but its unlikely. You can use a home computer as a SSH Server. (I'll find a tutorial on this.)

You can go here for a tutorial on SSH Tunneling.

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This one again is easy, but can cost quite a bit of money. You can use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to access blocked sites. I'm not quite sure on the specifics on how it works, but it should work on basically every network, but it requres a program to use it. There is a tutorial about bypassing proxy servers with a VPN here

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Update:

Solution 2

Since you are using Firefox, I'd recommend looking into Vidalia. It is basically the Tor network with a simplified GUI. Also uses a Firefox plugin to integrate quite nicely.

Last I checked, I had no problem with flash-anything. Was quite slow, but that's to be expected with any proxy, I do believe.

Comments

[DisgruntledGoat]

How did you set up the proxy then? If I put a domain, say totallyhidden.info, under automatic config then it makes no difference, my browsing continues like there is no proxy. If I put it under manual config with port 80, no pages load at all. If I use the functionality provided through the web site itself then no Flash loads at all.