What if your IT administrator gets wise to the anonymity market? What if he blocks access to the proxy servers run by companies like Anonymizer and GhostSurf? Well, we wholeheartedly encourage you to abide by your company's IT policies. But since you asked, there is a way around them: Bypass.

Much like Anonymizer and GhostSurf, the Bypass Proxy Client encrypts your Internet requests and reroutes them through its own servers. But in addition to offering the client, the company offers Bypass Portal Server, letting you set up your own remote proxy server on another machine. You can route all requests through, say, your home machine before sending them on to Bypass's servers, and IT will be none the wiser. Not only that, Bypass can reroute all sorts of Internet traffic—not just HTTP requests. It handles FTP, SMTP, POP3, NEWS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5, so it can anonymously reroute everything from newsgroup to P2P file-sharing requests.

Unfortunately, the app isn't for novices. When you set up the client, you'll have to change a few settings on your Web browser and any other client you wish to mask requests from. And unless you carefully read the support page on the company's Web site, you won't realize this is necessary. Needless to say, setting up the server is even more difficult.

Bypass is a subscription service. If you pay $5.95 a month, you can transfer 50MB of data per day at speeds of up to 120 Kbps . For $9.95 a month, you can transfer 100MB at 200 Kbps . There's a free option as well, but it's almost too slow to use, and it restricts you to only two transfer protocols at a time. If you're a hardcore Internet user and you can afford the $10 a month, Bypass is the way to go. If not, you should probably look elsewhere.

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Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.