I know fairly little about proxies, but I've learned a bit in the past few months. First I learned you could anonymize your browsing with a proxy, something like Tor (?), and then I learned how some companies route local traffic through a different kind of proxy. The why I still haven't grasped, but I used what I knew to get a work computer's Internet Explorer to get online when coworkers said "this computer can get online but not this one". Turns out IT just hadn't set the proxy settings (oops!) so I simply copied them from one PC to the next, and then from IE to Firefox Portable.
But now my Firefox Portable only works at work. At home I've got to go to Tools, Options, Advanced, Network, Settings, and switch from the work proxy to No Proxy. A lot of work, so I'd just use the home Firefox installation. Nothing wrong with that, but I thought it would be neat to be able to use my Portable Firefox away from work.
Well, I went looking, and I found an extension that's just what I need: QuickProxy. Others might recommend FoxyProxy or something else, but I really just needed a simple toggle switch. When it comes to Windows, I'm a little smarter than I'm letting on here, but when it comes to networks and networking, I'll freely admit to being dumb as a post. But that's alright, so long as stuff works.
Now, I'm sure those other kinds of proxies would allow me to get around the block on sites like YouTube at work (right?) but of course, I do value my job, so I'm not looking for something like that, which is why I avoided looking for proxy tools for so long. Because I guess there's two kinds, the kind companies use for whatever reason, and the anonymizing ones? Or are they really the same, just used differently?
I didn't make this extension or anything, so I'm not trying to spam/advertise, just found it useful and thought others might.
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It's for security so they can monitor and possibly block all outgoing connections. We have details on configuring Firefox Portable for multiple proxies here:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#proxies
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
a Firefox plugin called MM3-Proxyswitch (found at http://www.proxy-offline-browser.com/ProxySwitch/) which sounds like it does a similar thing
It allows me to add a 'button' on the top & when @ work I make sure it's 'Red' (i.e. use the proxy settings) & when @ home click to turn it 'grey' (Don't use proxy settings)
although I had a lot of trouble finding out what the proxy settings were - since the IT department were very secretive about them - I did eventually find out the 'automatic script file' & had to try each IP address until I found one that worked (but it doesn't allow me to do any 'FTP' to my personnal website though - must be a different set somewhere else)
I've been using this setup too for a while.
Firefox & QuickProxy + PuTTY Portable
Small, simple and efficient.
I host my own SSH server at home to which I connect from the office.
Also if you are looking for a shell account, I got an Bshellz.net elite account at 10 euros (one time fee) for 500MB of web storage as well as a good bandwidth allocation. Pretty useful in a scenario where there is a power outage at home or if you need a backup proxy.
I have a shell account at silenceisdefeat.com, but the bandwidth allocation feels like you browse on a dialup connection.
Thank you for the post. I found it refreshing and informative. I hope you continue to be in the community.
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world