The most common Globe hack right now is a modified opera mini browser which uses special proxies within the Globe network. These proxies are usually found by hackers who scan through all internal IP addresses on the Globe network, looking for open ports commonly used by proxies (80, 8080 etc). These hackers then share these IP addresses with the community. The risk of using these proxies is that you never know who is operating the proxy server and what they might be doing with your surfing information. They could steal your passwords, emails and so on.

The second most common SmartBro hack (also used for Globe) is a VPN or DNS/Ping tunnel. These allow you to circumvent the Harmony proxy which checks if you have load before allowing your traffic through. These methods also allow you to circumvent traffic shaping which blocks torrents and limits how fast you can download. Obviously you still need a good signal strength.

Once you’ve signed in, you can setup shortcuts, stats and blocks. Not only can you limit what sites people can visit, you can also view stats on how many times people on your network have tried to access those blocked sites. Although you can’t pinpoint which exact computer on your network was trying to reach the blocked domain.

To prevent your users from circumventing the blocks, you’ll want to apply firewall rules in your router that restrict any TCP/UDP traffic on port 53 to be redirected to openDNS. If you have an advanced router which is capable of deep packet inspection then you could also make use of this to ensure DNS packets only ever go to openDNS and not to another public DNS server which wouldn’t enforce your restrictions.

Another way that users of your network may try to bypass openDNS is via a VPN or web proxy. Thankfully openDNS have a category for web proxies that will block the proxies as fast as they pop up. As for VPN, again you can use firewall rules on your router to prevent people bypassing the opendns blocks.

You’ll need a dedicated server or a VPS and specialised software. You’ll also need control over a TLD (e.g .com, .net, .co.uk).

If you’re stuck in an office with restrictive browsing, you can use this tunnel to get around the blocks.

You can download Hans ping tunnel software and install it onto your dedicated server (or even a VPS) . Then you simply run the local script in a command prompt (terminal). You can then create an SSH socks5 proxy to the dedicated server over the new ping tunnel link you created.

Many 3g cell networks that allow pay as you go access will continue to allow pings even when you’ve run out of credit/load. That means a ping tunnel can be used to get online.

You may be thinking that a tunnel operating via pings would be slow, but it can easily reach speeds of 400Kbit/second!

If you cant find a nice free wifi point then you can visit your local cafe. Usually they’ll have a free wireless network for you to use. Many of these cafes also allow you to plug your laptop in to keep it charged. Buy a few coffees and you can spend the whole day there.

Just remember to secure your connection when using a network that you’re not in complete control of. The best way of doing this would be to traffic your connection through a VPN or SSH tunnel.