The IWF, uploading and transparent proxies

FoxEye · 21 Aug 2010 at 22:06

So it seems both uploading.com and fileserve.com are on the IWF "suspicious sites" list, presumably for people uploading CP (the "why don't you have a seat" kind).

After a bit of research, it appears that all requests for files from those sites are routed through something called a "transparent proxy", meaning all UK users have the same IP address (or share a very small amount).

The net result of this is that no-one from the UK can currently freely download any file from uploading.com or fileserve.com (and I suspect a ton of others), due to usage limitations. *If you are a paying member I don't think this applies.

So on my travels I looked for ways to circumvent this transparent proxy, the workings of which don't entirely make sense to me. Anyway, the suggestions were "use the IP address instead of the URL". Well, any attempt to access fileserve.com using any of its IPs results in a blank page. No joy there.

Second suggestion was "use HTTPS" instead of normal HTTP. Again, no dice. Page not found/time-out.

Now I could ask the uploader to put it on a different site, but there's no guarantee rapidshare or whoever won't end up on the IWF suspicious list next month, screwing us over again.

So how, ladies and gents, do you bypass this stupid transparent proxy that's shafting all UK users?

SupermotoMX · 21 Aug 2010 at 22:25

i dont personaly. but ive heard bittorrent is handy for downloading things

wij · 21 Aug 2010 at 23:33

FoxEye said:
So how, ladies and gents, do you bypass this stupid transparent proxy that's shafting all UK users?

Get a decent ISP that doesn't do it, or anything of the sort for that matter.

Simply as its rather easy to bypass any of these sorts of systems anyway, tunnelling traffic from another country, VPN services etc.

http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

FoxEye · 21 Aug 2010 at 23:56

wij said:
Get a decent ISP that doesn't do it, or anything of the sort for that matter.

Simply as its rather easy to bypass any of these sorts of systems anyway, tunnelling traffic from another country, VPN services etc.

http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

Changing ISP is not an option for me atm, as I'm locked into a 24 month contract.

ubern00b · 22 Aug 2010 at 00:03

FoxEye said:
Changing ISP is not an option for me atm, as I'm locked into a 24 month contract.

It will be your ISP that is implementing the proxy. In this case you will need another computer on another ISP to "bounce" off. This could be a friends computer or a server or just about anything else that isn't using your ISP.

tntcoder · 22 Aug 2010 at 00:29

Tor will bypass such systems perfectly, don't expect greater than 25kb/s through it though, often less.

FoxEye · 22 Aug 2010 at 01:45

tntcoder said:
Tor will bypass such systems perfectly, don't expect greater than 25kb/s through it though, often less.

Worked perfectly

The files are small, so speed isn't an issue. Cheers!

JonJ678 · 22 Aug 2010 at 22:57

A transparent proxy shouldnt do anything to your ip address, that may even be a reasonable definition of transparent. It could block any connection it fancied though.

One could however store a copy of everything you download with no particular hassle.

I cant get squid to behave with https, so that would probably stop them recording anything useful.

Tor is a good solution here, glad it worked for you.

F2kSel · 23 Aug 2010 at 14:52

The IWF seems to get the blame for this but I'm not convinced, I think it's just the hosts limiting the usage. There are much bigger hosts that never seem to have this problem and others seem to have intermittent problems.

I will check out Tor though.

tntcoder · 23 Aug 2010 at 14:55

F2kSel said:
The IWF seems to get the blame for this but I'm not convinced, I think it's just the hosts limiting the usage. There are much bigger hosts that never seem to have this problem and others seem to have intermittent problems.

I will check out Tor though.

Yer Tor is a very nice solution, just make sure you don't tunnel private info like logins/passwords through it for non HTTPS/SSL sites.

bigredshark · 23 Aug 2010 at 15:22

wij said:
Get a decent ISP that doesn't do it, or anything of the sort for that matter.

Simply as its rather easy to bypass any of these sorts of systems anyway, tunnelling traffic from another country, VPN services etc.

http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

While it is good advice it's not entirely their fault, big ISPs pretty much got threatened into adopting the IWF filtering solution by the last government who said they'd legislate to make it mandatory if they didn't do something.

Thankfully in some ways, the fact the big ISPs swallowed it and went along is the saving grace of the small ISPs who don't implement it. If virgin/BT/be* had kicked up a fuss then it'd likely be a legal requirement for all ISPs now...