Circumvention

These days I spend more and more time getting around goofy computer policies at work. I can understand making me run with limited privileges, that's just about a given. Things like taking away my "Run..." command under XP's Start Menu, though, well those are just stupid.

One of the most common IT rules is in blocking access to certain websites, usually the ones that don't have an obvious "for work" usage, eat up a lot of bandwidth, or have iffy content.

If you run into this problem and have a Windows machine with an available USB port, go get the XeroBank Browser (formerly TorPark) and put it on a USB drive. The xB browser uses Tor to anonymize requests for pages, so that your corporate firewall doesn't know what sites you're actually after.

It's slower than a regular browser, and you're still not protected if your boss has software installed to see your computer screen (e.g. VNC) so I wouldn't use it to check for a new job at work or anything. But if you need the occasional jaunt into YouTube, it might be worth a look.