Most web filters work off blacklists yeah
You pay a subscription to the company, like with anti-virus software, and they update the blacklist regularly. You can of course add sites or remove them yourself to fine tune it.

So the proxy would work in this case, unless it's on the blacklist itself...

If it's one that works by keywords (although I believe these are increasingly rare these days, since more and more content that people want to block is Flash videos, rich content etc rather than just HTML) you will of course be out of luck.

Go and see your IT department for a chat if there's a nerd there you get on with, I'm sure you can come to some sort of arrangement. You can bet their internet won't be filtered. (I quite enjoy unlimited surfing of whatever I want, whilst a screen next to me monitors the admin girls' attempts to log onto Facebook when they should be working. I like the feeling of power)

When the message comes up saying the site is blocked, does it display anything that would help identify the technology/software doing the blocking?

And are you running as an adminstrator in Windows (able to get into Control Panel, make changes etc) or is it tightly locked down?

There will be a way past it somehow!
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 19:11, Reply)