Psiphon Has Been Released

Welcome to the brave new world for free and open access to the internet in school districts, it is time we focused on Education, Education, Education because our crutches are about to be taken away from us.

It has been over a week now since the open source personal proxy serverPsiphon has been released and web filters are never going to be the same again. I mentioned psiphon a few months ago. After a quick download of the software and about 5 minutes of setup you can have your own proxy server running on any internet enabled computer. If you are having trouble installing the software there are psiphon support forums.

A couple of things to note about the software:

• If you use a Dynamic DNS service like DYNDNS you can keep a static domain name associated with your IP address, like yourname.is-a-geek.com.
• If you are behind a router you can use port forwarding to allow access to the proxy server from any available port.
• The connection uses https to transfer data, similar to what you would use for internet banking
• Access is provided through username/passwords that the end user generates
• You can log activity on your personal proxy server

I am really interested to see how the web filter companies are going to react to this new software. I also think high school students will find a personal proxy server easier to setup then most of their peer-2-peer file sharing software or an MMORPG.

Just a little note of warning too, I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. Accessing a proxy server might by against your school district’s Acceptable Use Policy.