The Proxy Guide

Web proxy guide for users and webmasters

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Will you worry about the privacy issue of Silk browser?

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This is an invited guest post from Surf100.com. You may check their surf100 web proxy blog for more articles. In this short article, the author reviews the potential privacy problems of the Silk browser in Kindle Fire.

amazon-silk-browserWhen Amazon launched its long waited tablet (and finally disappointing) Kindle Fire on Wednesday, the integrated Silk browser was also unveiled. This is more interesting for web proxy providers than the tablet itself.

The $199 price tag of Kindle Fire is really irresistible. Of course, Amazon need earn money. Some analysts say Amazon will earn back the profit margin in contents. This is absolutely true. But the overlooked (potentially) big earning machine of this cheap tablet is users’ browsing data handled by the built-in Silk browser.

The tablet works fast, at least, based on all demos. This actually also gives audiences a wrong impression that the tablet is fast. But the trick is that when you browse websites, most rendering will be done in Amazon Cloud, EC2. It looks like a super web proxy. And, more than a super proxy, it also “cache” your browsing data, which may include some confidential or sensitive information, for example, some business emails or memos.

So, it is not surprising that this Silk browser immediately raised some concerns on user’s privacy and security. The problem is not the proxy itself, but how Amazon will use the data handled. For most web proxies, user browser data are not stored, although some Glype web proxy may cache some images files. So, the user browsing data will never be used. Silk proxy may work in different ways.

Silk browser is very similar to Opera Mini. But Opera Mini does little caching, and does most on rendering and compressing. Therefore, there are almost no concerns on its privacy issues.

So, you can consider Opera Mini as a super web proxy, but not Silk browser, which will keep something when you leave. This is not a web proxy should do. The security of the “cached” data is one issue; whether such data will be misused by Amazon or third parties is another issue.

If you concern your privacy, when you get your Kindle Fire in November, you may turn off the proxy mode to access web directly, or use a web proxy.

 

Top 5 reasons of using web proxy

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This is a guest contribution from TheProxyFree.com. You may check their Proxy Blog. In This article, the top 5 reasons of using web proxy were summarized.

Top-5-reasons-of-using-web-proxyOf course, most our visitors are using our free anonymous web proxy service. Web proxy is quite simple. It acts as an agent between your computer and the site you want to browse. That’s it.

People are using web proxy mainly for the following 5 reasons:

  • Bypass blocking. This blocking may be placed by your government, or your ISP, or your organization, or even your parents. The intention may be good if contents blocked are not suitable for your age or your religion. But some ISPs or organizations just subscribe some third-party services, and block sites blindly. To access such contents, the only way is to use web proxy. Arguing with your ISP to whitelist the blocked sites is usually just a waste of time.
  • Surf anonymously. Netizens are more and more concerned about their privacy. If an ad pops out telling you an event in your neighborhood, and showing you the route from your home to the venue, will you be scared? Surely. This may be slightly exaggerated, but this is possible for some advertising companies already. They know your location, your gender, your education, your marriage, your income and probably even the color of your pants. Most webmasters may not collect such info, but the third-part ad-serving companies definitely collect as much as they can. Don’t talk about the rubbish laws; use anonymous proxy. Please note, this will only partially solve the problem because the web proxy have ads as well.
  • Safe browsing at work. Sometimes, you may not want your IT department knows the sites you visited. Although the site is not blocked (as a matter of fact blocking is the failed attempt to control the content access), browsing it during office hours may be deemed as inappropriate, especially when you are scrutinized for promotion or layoff.
  • Access contents not available for your region. The greedy content (movies, music…) providers always want to maximize their profit by restricting the availability to certain regions. Suppose you were sent to an Asian country by your company, if you want to watch an American TV show (anyway, it may be just a rubbish, which you already subscribed in US) in Asia, you have to wait, wait…, . Even the local government does not block it, the content provider blocks your access from Asia. It is not the fault of local governments or ISP, but the greediness of content providers.
  • Participate anti-govern activities. The Jasmine revolution in Arabian countries illustrated the powerfulness of internet. It is not surprising that some countries have tightened the the control of internet. So, if a person is involved in anti-government political activities (usually deemed as illegal in that country), he has no choice but to hide his identity as much as he can. Actually, what web proxy can hide is very limited. The law-enforcement in all countries have more advanced technologies to track the traffic through web proxy.

Of course, it is not new that a lot of ISPs and third-party rubbish internet security services block proxy sites. The good thing is that there are many new web proxy sites everyday. Building a web proxy is very simple as explained in this article.

If your web proxy is blocked , you have to change your web proxy. So, find a way to subscribe to proxy.org, or unrestrictedsurf.com to get latest proxy.

Please note, the privacy protection provided by web proxy is very minimum. Do not play with law-enforcement authorities unless you have better anonymous tools.