Question: how did this trick help you bypass the proxy? The only way I can think of this possibly helping you is by changing the Host header and that somehow f

Question: how did this trick help you bypass the proxy? The only way I can think of this possibly helping you is by changing the Host header and that somehow fooling the proxy into allowing your connection through. However some random testing with both a modern browser and a really old version of firefox I have installed shows that it seems to convert the 'weird number format' into a proper IP address, even when using a proxy. In other words, I cannot see how using these weird IPs ever could make a difference from the proxy's perspective.