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.

Glype

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glype-girlGlype proxy script is a free-to-use, web-based proxy script written in. It is open source, but it is NOT released as GPL or a similar license. Its license requires: either keeping the back link or getting a (paid) license.

Glype script has become very popular after PHProxy project ceased. Glype is similar to PHProxy, but there is one fundamental difference: Glype uses curl to retrieve web pages. In addition, compared to PHProxy, Glype has more caching controls.

On May 7, 2010, Baron Munchausen, the administrator of Proxy.org announced that he acquired Glype. (source: http://forums.glype.com/news-updates/1286-baron-acquires-glype.html and http://proxy.org/forum/1273292889.html)

The official website of Glype is: http://www.glype.com. A live example of Glype is UtopianPal.com.

Some tutorials for Glype:

 

PHProxy

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phproxy-proxy-girlPHProxy (PHP proxy script) was a very popular proxy script before the author,Abdullah Arif, discontinued the project and relinquish all rights (as well as responsibilities) on September 7, 2007. The script is very similar to CGIProxy script. Actually the author also mentioned that the project was inspired by CGIProxy project. However, because PHProxy was written in PHP, compared with CGIProxy, PHProxy is generally easier to install for most webmasters.

The last release (version 0.5b2) of this script was on January 27, 2007 under GPL license. The script is available for download in sourceforge.

A copy of the last version (0.52b2) can also be found on TheProxyGuide (click to download). A demo of PHProxy script is available at: phproxy.goyap.net

Usually PHProxy does not need complicate templates and most webmasters just change the color schemes. A typical proxy sites powered by PHProxy is TheProxyFree.com, which uses the default template with slight modifications. Once of the largest collection of PHProxy (PHP proxy ) script powered websites can be found at:UnRestrictedSurf.

Tutorials on PHProxy:

1. How to install PHProxy ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOwVrm6T0zI  )

2. PHProxy (PHP proxy) tips and tricks: insert ad code and customization

 

tunneling

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Tunneling proxy may have various meanings; but most time, this refers to socks proxy. As the name suggests, socks proxy use sock 4 or 5 protocol, which performs at an intermediate layer between the presentation layer and the transport layer.

Socks (tunneling) proxy can be used for any form of TCP or UDP socket connection. This means it can be used for most application software (in addition to http connections), e.g., instant messenger.

horse-cleaner

 

open proxy

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open-proxyOpen proxy may have different interpretations, e.g., some geeks deem web-based proxy as open proxy; others may confuse open proxy with unauthentic proxies.

Open proxy usually is similar to web-based proxy (e.g., using http protocol), but there are some differences. Web-based proxy retrieves resources for the client, and at the same time some modifications were also made. For example, most web-based proxy scripts rewrite the java script and act as client directly. But most open proxy only fetch the resources and do not make any modifications.

Because open proxy uses http protocol for the connections between the client and the proxy server. This makes it different from tunneling, or socks proxy.

 

web-based proxy

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web-based-proxy-girlWeb-based proxy, some times called web proxy, usually refers to a type of proxy service through web servers. A client connects to the service provider’s website (proxy server), then type the web address he/she wants to browse. The proxy server fetches the contents, and passes them to the client.

By using web-based proxy, the client may access sites blocked by their local ISP or parents. For example, social networking sites, e.g., myspace and facebook, were blocked in some US and UK schools. The pupils may use web-based proxy to bypass the blocking and access these sites.

Similarly, in some countries, the internet is censored for various purposes. Some users in these countries may also use web proxy to access the blocked sites.

Some users use web proxy for privacy considerations, and they do not want to disclose their IP info to such untrusted sites. In this case, their info will very likely only be recorded in the proxy server.

Web-based proxy usually is powered by a few proxy scrips, including CGIProxy, PHProxy, Glype, Zelune and Surrogafier.

proxy

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web-proxy-no-cheating-pleaseIn WWW world, proxy usually refers to the intermediary that retrieves information from other sources (e.g., websites) for the client. This is sensible when:

  • the client cannot directly connect to the resources, e.g., some ISPs’ firewall blocks these resources erratically or deliberately;
  • the client does not want to disclose his/her info (e.g., IP address) to the resources

There are different types of proxy: web-based proxy, open proxy and tunneling.