Most everyone knows that Google is a nifty search engine. In addition to having badass searching powers it has another nice, but often overlooked, feature. Google keeps a cache of nearly every page it indexes. This means that google keeps a copy of the page ON THEIR SERVER. This is an excellent way to find pages that have for some reason dropped off the net, but it also allows you to bypass many server side filtering schemes. Most of these schemes rely on a central server somewhere that has a list of naughty URLs. Google is a well respected search engine and is therefore not on any list of naughty URLs. Let’s examine a typical google search result.

The Title Of The Page Found
…A Line or two
Description: Insert Description Here
Category: Maybe Some Category Here
www.nameofsite.com/ - size of site in kB - Cached - Similar pages

That link that says Cached leads to Google’s copy of that page and that page only. Once you get there and start clicking around you will find that any blocked pages linked to by the blocked site are still blocked. However, if you search for those linked sites individually you may be able to read their cached versions as well.

Now before everyone gets porn happy at work/school, allow me to clarify. I said that links from the cached page may still be protected. This includes image links That means that you may be able to get to your favorite XXX site, but all the images will most probably be broken links. Secondly if your connection is monitored at work/school for requests of naughty sites, then I suggest that you not use this method. Your browser will still make the request for the image, and get blocked, which will show up in the log of people who tried to access porn sites.

Well, now that I have dashed everyone’s hopes allow me to explain how this technique is still useful. First, if your employer blocks access to non-business and criminal skills sites as mine does, then this is a fine way to read 2600 or whatever site your admin deems “criminal”. Secondly, try using your mind instead of your eyes when hunting for that erotic thrill. Search for erotic literature and read!!! Besides, how many strange things can a woman put down there before you get bored and need to use your imagination to get off? Oh well, there is always ASCII Porn.

For the purpose that brainwave described, it might be usefull to know that you don't actually have to find for the site you want, all you have to do is search for
cache:www.example.com

This trick is really useful, but it won't take long for the people who set up the firewall to figure it out (and disallow "http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:*" (they did this at my school))... just don't forget BabelFish and The Dialectizer and any other site which is capable of downloading off another site...(ie: a web based cgi proxy)

Also see: How to get around censorware and Another way to defeat URL filters

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