What Is A Proxy And How Do They Work?

[FruitRocks 0]

What is an anonymous proxy and how are they different from a regular proxy? I know what a regular proxy is (basically creates a middle man between two computers). How does it "hide" your IP address? you're still surfing the internet, so couldn't you go into the router and see the logs of where a person has been? How does adding javascript to anonymous proxies supposedly compromise your anonymity?

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hello there!A proxy is someone or something that does something on your behalf. Remember the concept of proxy attendance in university when you get someone to mark you as present while the attendance sheet is being passed around?In the computing world, a proxy is something similar. When your computer wants something, it asks another computer to do the work on it's behalf. Usually a proxy is used to implement security or to improve performance. If you and your friend have to go to class, you would drive two cars. Instead, if just one of you two would go to class and get back the notes for the two of you, you'd use half the petrol (or whatever other fuel or energy source you are using). In this case, you are using a 'proxy' to go get the notes for you to save resources.A proxy keeps you anonymous by getting other servers on the Internet to think that your computer has the IP address as the proxy server. You can do this in several ways, but the two most common are to enter an HTTP proxy into your browser settings or to visit a website similar to anonymizer.com to fetch content and display it. If you are using a website as a proxy, it is possible to 'inject' something onto a page such that your web browser visits the other server directly, thus compromising your anonymity by revealing your IP address.

[Alex Cicala 0]

To my understanding a proxy is a website that allows you to view another website through its code/or site. Normally you'd be connecting with a different IP and from different country. In which case you'd be using a proxy if you are blocked from a website, etc. A proxy acts as a filter for you to go to a website, such as Google. Hope I helped

[The Simpleton 2]

An anonymous proxy is a piece of software designed to protect the privacy and anonymity of web browsers from web site operators, Internet snoops, and even unfriendly governments.The anonymous proxy software resides on a proxy server. The web browser connects to the proxy server and the proxy server connects to the web server.
The web server does not know who you are, it only knows who the proxy server is. The proxy server does know who you are -- so you had better choose a proxy server that you trust.
Source: Tech-Faq

Like every piece of software, this one is misused a lot. Many people use these to get around sites that are blocked and to which they have no access (reason may be that they were banned, etc). These proxies are effective on almost all sites, but now-a-days the more popular sites are well-designed to deal with these proxies and they simply ignore requests coming from such proxies. So it would be no use on some popular sites such as myspace and facebook. But there are some powerful proxies which can get past virtually any kind of blocked site. These are, of course, rare and even if found, one should restrain themselves from using it.

[jamjamnorman 0]

Like every piece of software, this one is misused a lot. Many people use these to get around sites that are blocked and to which they have no access (reason may be that they were banned, etc). These proxies are effective on almost all sites, but now-a-days the more popular sites are well-designed to deal with these proxies and they simply ignore requests coming from such proxies. So it would be no use on some popular sites such as myspace and facebook. But there are some powerful proxies which can get past virtually any kind of blocked site. These are, of course, rare and even if found, one should restrain themselves from using it.

I would usually agree with this, but then you hear about things lke the great firewall of china, where the chinese government blocks sites against it's beliefs. That being said, it should not be used for some 13 yr olds trying to look at porn on the schools network. That is a big no-no.

Javascript is used to change a proxy's address from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
to something like
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/=
this particular example is using base 64 encoding(http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp) but there are many others like rot13, which is a simple ceasar shift 13 places

Edit:Spelling
Edited August 24, 2009 by jamjamnorman (see edit history)

[The Simpleton 2]

The great firewall of China is indeed a sad thing because the government shouldn't interfere with people's personal tastes. There are effective ways to block what a child does on the internet today. Treating the whole country like kids is a joke!I don't think the Chinese have got a proxy to get past this great wall? I'm not sure about it.

[okayo0 0]

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to its filtering rules. For example, it may filter traffic by IP address or protocol. If the request is validated by the filter, the proxy provides the resource by connecting to the relevant server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it 'caches' responses from the remote server, and returns subsequent requests for the same content directly.

Source

[k_nitin_r 8]

To the average person, a proxy is of no use unless they want to get around some kind of censorship. For example, when a national level proxy has been implemented, the only purpose that a proxy serves for an average user is to get around the censorship. In some cases, proxies are used to get an additional layer of anonymity but most users do not go as far as to use a proxy server for anonymity unless they are engaging in something illegal. Within organizations, proxy servers are used to block content so employees can use a proxy to get around the corporate proxy server and access the content that they want to get to.Using proxy servers is a security risk because when you are using them, all of your data passes through their servers. They can do just about anything with your data, such as sell your personally identifying information, usage habits, credit information, email and social network passwords, or even your credit card numbers. They can also include advertising within regular web pages. Think of the Google.com search engine with an advertisement in place of the Google logo - proxy servers can do that to have you watch or click on an advertisement so that they can earn revenue while providing you with free services. Some proxy services charge you a subscription fee to provide you with access to their services but with proxy servers often being blocked, you would have no idea if you can still access their services after having used it for several months.

[SpaceMaster 0]

The primary point of the proxies is to function as a server for a client device, but pass on the requests to another server for service. We can separate the proxies on 2 big categories. First category is that we have 2 types of proxies: those who save the default gateway of every client that uses them, and those who don't. The second category belongs to their anonymity, that means if they're only Transparet (which save all data when the client uses the proxy browsing other services;websites), Anonymous (proxies that don't show records but services which you are browsing know that you're using proxy) and Elite (don't save any records and act like a real client on the internet for the client without showing any proxy mask). Proxies are mostly usable to visit some site your country has a global bypass which means your country's or your ip adress has block on that site.