Getting Started with Your-Freedom Software

This post was published long ago, when I was a student and an amateur blogger. The links might be outdated and content may not be useful anymore. Please read this content keeping its age in mind.

I have explained briefly about Your Freedom in my last post “Your-Freedom – Bypass Restrictive Firewalls and Filters”. In this post we shall see how to configure Your Freedom and use Your Freedom software, with live screenshots and details. If you have any queries please comment at the end.

1 Registration process

Your first step in using the service is to register on web site. You need to visit http://www.your-freedom.net/ and create an account there. There is a link underneath the login and password form fields in the red part of the banner.

On the registration page, choose a username (preferably one that is not likely already used) and provide a password.

Once you’ve filled everything in, click on the “Create account” button. You will be asked to confirm your details by clicking on “Create account now”.

Within a few minutes you should receive an email containing an activation link. Activate your account by clicking on the link in the email (or cut&paste it into your browser).

What if you cannot access the web page because it’s blocked? Well, it’s a hen and egg problem then. Either ask someone else to create an account for you (or do it from somewhere else) and modify it later, or obtain the client software from another source than our server, and use the username “unregistered” and the password “unregistered” in it. This account will only provide access to Your Freedom web page, however. Alternatively, if you are able to send an email to the customer support, ask them to create an account for you. Just write to info@your-freedom.net telling them about your problem, suggest a username (please limit yourself to ASCII letters and numbers, dashes and underscores) and a password, and ask them to email you the client software (please state which type you’d like, read getting and installing client software ). If all the odds are against you and you can’t get the client software from anywhere else they’ll mail you a CD as well.

2 Getting and installing the client software

Once you’ve created an account you may use it to log in on the web page. This will give you access to the Download section of the page. Log in, then click on “Downloads”.  There are several ways to run the Your Freedom client, and consequently there is more than one download option:

• Windows Installer Windows users who already have a suitable Java Runtime Environment3 installed on their system and who have enough rights to install software should be able to use this version. The download is about 1 megabyte in size. If you are unable to download files ending in .exe, try to copy the link location and paste it in the URL field of a new browser window, then change the .exe to .txt.

• Windows Full Installer This version comes bundled with a JRE of its own so there are no prerequisites. Every Windows user should be able to use this one, provided that you may install software on your PC. The download is rather fat, about 28 megabytes. Again, this is an .exe file, try changing the ending to .txt if this is a problem. A benefit of this version is that it’s compiled to native code and will probably consume less resources.

Both Windows installer versions are installed by running the .exe file. Just follow the instructions in the installer and you should be done in a minute.

If you are not running Windows or if you cannot install software on your PC, your best choice is the Java archive version. Download the ZIP file and extract the contents into a folder to which you may write. This could also be a memory stick, or a CDROM, by the way. Then run the Java interpreter with the “freedom.jar” file. With Windows it’s usually enough if you double-click on the JAR file, but you may want to open a “cmd” window instead, “cd” to the directory and run “javaw –jar freedom.jar” instead. On Unix boxes you’d normally use “java –jar freedom.jar” or “kaffe –jar freedom.jar” or something similar; Unix users normally know.

Your Freedom also offers a Mac OSX installer version but  it might be less current than the others. You should be able to use the Java archive version on your Mac without problems – OSX is built on Unix and ships with a pre-installed JRE.

Alternatively  all files are also available from http://mediafire.com/yourfreedom.

Here is the screenshots of installation of Your freedom on Windows 7 operating System :

Generally, the Java archive version of the Your Freedom client should run on every computer that has a suitable JRE – and enough memory. We love to hear from you if you’ve managed to run it on an exotic piece of hardware (or in an unusual place)!

3 Connecting for the first time

When you start the Your Freedom client application for the first time, you’ll be presented with a “wizard”. It’s safe not to use it and enter all required information manually, but if you are unsure, give it a try first. Manual configuration may be required in difficult connection scenarios.

Now let’s assume that you are using the wizard. It will first present a Welcome page:

Do as you are told and click on the “Next” button. You’ll see this page:

If your Internet connection is through a web proxy, enter the details here. If you are unsure, try to click “Next” first. If all you get is an empty list of available servers like this:

(ignore the “auto-choose best” part) you need to figure out about your web proxy (or configure everything manually, e.g. if you want to use an FTP proxy!). If you get this:

then you’ve filled in the proxy details properly but you need to authenticate on the proxy. Click on “Next”…

… and fill in suitable login credentials. In many cases this will be your Windows Domain login (don’t forget to fill in the domain as well!). Just try until it works, you can click “Next” to try.

If you see this page:

it means that you have not provided a working proxy configuration. Click on “Back” and modify the hostname/IP address and/or the port setting. Many proxies “listen” on port 80, 8080 or 3128, to name the most popular ports. Check your web browser’s configuration, it should be able to tell you.

Oh by the way, if you find that the wizard has the proxy details already filled in, then it’s not magic – it just found them in your PC’s registry and probably has made life easier for you.

Let’s assume you’ve been able to make it work. (If not, please ask a knowledge person around you how you can use the web proxy, or try a manual configuration). It worked if you see something like this:

Your Freedom

It’s important that you see a “yes” or a number in any of the columns HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or UDP. A “yes” means that the client has been able to use this protocol to connect to the server using the default port settings, a number would mean that it has been able to connect but on a different port, and a “no” means that the protocol could not be used to connect to this server. The results are sorted by preference (a number between 0 and 10), it indicates how well the server fits your requirements (if you’ve set any). Choose a server (any will do for now, unless it’s all “no” – don’t use “auto-choose best”), then click on “Next”.

On this page, enter your Your Freedom username and password; it’s the same you used to download the client from our web page. Click on “Next”.

It seems you’re done now! Click on “Save and Exit”. The main window of the Your Freedom client should now look like this:

Note that the client just doesn’t know anything about the server and your account’s profile before you’ve connected to the server, that’s why some of the values seem to be somewhat odd (including the bandwidth – it’s not unlimited unless you’ve bought a package). Click on “Start connection” and you should see something like this after a few seconds:

Note that all the details are now filled in, and the bandwidth reads “64.0k”. That’s kilobits, about the speed of an ISDN connection or a bit faster than with a high-speed modem. Click on “Account Profile” now.

This panel contains your account details. Without a package, you may not use any special servers (just the default ones), your bandwidth is limited, your maximum number of simultaneous streams is rather low and you may not relay connections from other PCs that use your PC as proxy. Your server connection will be terminated after 60 minutes (but you may reconnect when it happens). No server ports are assigned to you so none of them are forwarded to you. But at least, there are no access restrictions, you may access everything on the Internet.4

OK, time to configure your applications. Once you’ve set up at least a web browser to use Your Freedom the main objective should be reached: you should be able to access the web freely!

4 Configure applications – Automatically

Windows users can simply click on the “Applications” tab and see something like this:

This is a list of applications whose configurations can be modified automatically by Your Freedom. The ones that are installed on your system have working checkboxes, the other ones are greyed out. Tick the ones you wish to use with Your Freedom, then click “OK”. You’ll see something like this:

Hope it’s all successful! Then click “OK”. To restore the previous configuration of your applications, choose “Restore”, then tick the ones you would like to restore, and click “OK”. Note that applications that you’ve configured to use Your Freedom will only work properly if the Your Freedom connection to the server is up and running. Also, don’t forget to restore all your settings before de-installing the Your Freedom client!

To manually configure your applications, have a look at the Ports tab first:

This tells you that your local PC is now acting as a SOCKS4/5 proxy on port 1080 and as a Web Proxy on port 8080. To change these values, untick the service, then modify the port, then re-activate (this can be done on-the-fly!). “Relay for others” will only work with some packages.

If for some reason you cannot configure your applications from within the Your Freedom client, you need to manually configure them to use web proxy “localhost” on port “8080” or SOCKS proxy “localhost” on port “1080” (if you’ve got the choice, use SOCKS version 5).

Where are I find more details?

Visit the Docs & FAQ’s section at http://www.your-freedom.net/index.php?id=doc

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If you have any queries please comment below.