You may have heard of proxies - they were pretty popular when I was a teen as a way to unblock sites on the school network, so I can imagine that most people have heard the word at one time or another in their life. Few people know just what they are, what proxy anonymous surfing is, and the risks or advantages of it. Here's a basic guide to get you started.

Basically, when you use a proxy, you're connecting to someone else's computer. There's a 'proxy server' located somewhere in the world - a computer designed just to do that - have someone connect to it. People connect to proxies for different reasons - unblocking sites , bypassing firewalls, hiding your true identity, changing your IP address - these things are all interconnected. It's adding a middle man to you and the internet so instead of

YOU > INTERNET > YOU

the process goes

YOU > PROXY > INTERNET > PROXY > YOU

So you don't actually connect to the internet. This is how all the IP changes, firewall tricks, and other privacy features are used.

But what most people don't know is that a proxy doesn't' guarantee privacy or security and can actually be more of a risk than not using one at all.

First off, there are several types of proxies. Transparent proxies, reverse proxies, forward proxies, open proxies, and many more types exist. Not all of them are available for general use on the internet, but there are plenty more types. Many are used by websites or businesses, so for the general user we don't need to worry about all that jargon much.

Most of the time when you want to do anonymous proxy surfing, you're going to use an open proxy or a web based proxy, which are a standard 'forward proxy'. The proxy is designated by the user to retrieve information from the internet.

Open proxies are designed like this. They submit their information to websites as being a proxy server that's open to the general public. You can search for these sites or lists that feature open proxies, and use any one there. That's just what they're for - general and free use by the public.

Why?

That's just the thing. Some people do it because they're hippies or nerds and into the whole "free internet" thing. Just like torrent users who seed because it helps the community.

But the thing is that many proxy owners have an agenda. It varies, but use your imagination and all types of cyber crime including spam and identity theft come to mind. Some private proxies get misconfigured unintentionally and get used by the public, which is also something you don't want to get mixed up in.

Web based proxies are probably what you've seen or heard of before. It's a web page with a mini browser bar on it. You type the URL you want to visit into the bar, and it unblocks the site or allows you to visit it invisibly.

The problem with these is that like the open proxies, you can't really know what the server admins intentions are. Privacy online is a huge issue, and may be even why you're using the proxy. Do you really want to turn over all your private IP information to a person or group of people you don't know? These sites rarely have a privacy policy in place, so they could be using your IP, email address, and other data for something other than statistics.

So what's my point?

There are professional services out there that you should be using. Unless you're a 15 year old without a job, you can afford 5 dollars a month to protect your privacy. If you need or want to regularly unblock websites or need to change your IP on a regular basis for whatever reason, five dollars a day can get you a professional service for proxy anonymous surfing , and take away the risk and worry involved with using unknown proxy server sources. Most of the time these come in a similar form to a web based proxy described earlier, with a password to allow you to enter the site/proxy browser.