Anonymous Software, Proxies and Proxy Software. Fast Comparison

Most of Internet users currently are aware of various anonymous software or any other ways to protect their Internet data. Let's make clear the difference between proxies or proxy software and anonymous software.

Proxy Servers and Proxy Software

Proxies and Proxy Software are shared IPs that are used by all and each Internet users. There're tons of sites listing these free proxies daily. You can find really a lot of them but did you ever thought why they are free?

The answer is easy than you can imagine: they are shared with your for a profit and nothing more. That's not a secrete anymore that people create free staff to attract an attention to a service or to earn some money.

How exactly they earn? When you use shared Proxy server, all the Internet data are going on through the Proxy server without any encryption, i.e. owners of this server can see and collect this info. Next, this info can be used in different ways to earn money:

1) It can be sold to:
advertisers who need some info about potential clients in different fields; to hackers who want to learn wick sides of sites or users' connections holes;
2) they may use this information personally for different occasions like spamming, fishing, scamming, sending viruses and many others.



REMEMBER!!! You will never know who exactly share a FREE Proxy.

Anonymous Software

In most cases anonymous software is a kind of software that encodes all the traffic passing through its servers. It should be noted that anonymous software share its servers or IPs only with registered users.

The difference between paid and free anonymous software
IMHO we should understand that all what is free never will provide good quality. Paid services provide high speed of the Internet because they control each and every user' allowed speed resources and therefore no one will hurt.

With a paid anonymous software you get regular updates and useful tips to be protected on regular basis. Also you get a high professional technical staff which you can contact any time and you can be sure to get a fast reply.

One more thing about paid anonymous software is that they have an excellent ability to hide and change a real IP. That means that your IP will never find your IP banned on any site because a service controls the usage of IPs for legal actions only (no illegal activities through a service should be made or your account can be easily banned).

That's all what I wanted to say today. Thanks for staying with my blog and feel free to comment this post with any questions or additions. :-)

Why someone needs a UK IP?

This is a variation on quite a common email request I get - that is where can people get a UK proxy without spending any money. It is of course perfectly possible to access free proxies in any country, probably the easiest is the USA for obvious reasons. But sometimes people need a proxy in a certain country like the UK for a very specific reason.

Why would someone want a UK Proxy

Well there are lots of reasons, they are all primarily linked to geotargeting that annoying feature of blocking access to your web site or specific content depending on which country you are based in. For many people this is the only reason they end up searching the web for proxies and proxy bypassing and similar strange sounding terms.

From my email box without doubt the main one is to access BBC Iplayer although there are many more, most of the UK TV sites will only allow access to UK IP addresses. But lots of others restrict access for commercial reasons, web hosting companies who provide free web hosting usually only allow UK customers, there are web sites that allow you to send free SMS text messages - but again only if you're in the UK. Or should I say if you appear to be in the UK through a UK proxy.

Forums, media sites, online casinos, competitions and a host of other services on UK servers are blocked to anyone who doesn't have a UK IP address and hence people search for UK proxies to bypass this restriction. Of course this works in lots of other countries too, so you'll also find people online searching for French, US, Canadian and other proxies for similar reasons - the quest for Chinese proxies is not quite as fervent though.


So are there ways to access free UK Proxies then ?

Of course there are, as always on the internet there are numerous ways to achieve your goal and yes some of them are free. There are thousands of free proxies available on the internet partly due to a couple of free proxy scripts which are very easy to install on any little piece of internet real estate - the two main ones are Glype and Zelune.

These scripts are commonly used by people to make a little money out of running a proxy service. Lots of people buy up cheap domains, cheap hosting plans and upload these scripts to various servers. The will allow a web based proxy service which anyone can use, you just type in the URL and then the proxy server will fetch it for you.

Here's an example, there's lots of little buttons to request commonly blocked sites which when you click will be requested by the proxy. You then surf in a frame with all your web requests being redirected via the proxy wherever it is. It will generally obscure your IP address although you will be surfing surrounded by adverts and it could be pretty slow. I generally like to see adverts around these sites though as they are a legitimate way of financing the proxies, if they are too fast and free then there is a very good chance they are being hosted on a stolen or hacked server with the intent of stealing your usernames and passwords.

My advice is if you use these free proxies, never use them to access a site where you need to input any personal information, accounts or usernames ever. Glype is very simple to install and free - a much safer option would be to set it up on your own hosting space if you have - you can find it here - Glype.

But what if I want a Specific Country like a UK Proxy

Well unless you set up your own then you obviously need some way to filter out all the proxies with non-UK addresses. Fortunately there are a few ways of doing this, but for the sake of brevity I'll cover the simplest one here although definitely not the best way.

You'll find many web sites listing these freebie proxy script sites, one of the oldest and most popular is called proxy.org , if you look at their listings they have the facility to sort the proxies based on country, popularity, IP address software etc. If you want a UK proxy for a specific reason then you should find a free one you can use there. You'll need to take a bit of time to search through the listings though as these proxies change , fall over and get shut down hourly but with some patience you should find some that work. Don't expect too much though, they're not fast, not well configured or secure but they are at least free :)

So dude if you want a UK proxy for free that's one way to start. But I have to put some disclaimers before anyone uses these freebie proxies.

1. Just use them for general browsing, never ever put any username and passwords into these websites. They are not safe !
2. You can try them to bypass blocks at school, work or college but most modern content filters will easily spot these proxies.
3. Be suspicious of any that don't have adverts or any source of income. Adverts are annoying but they are they are at least a legitimate reason for people to set this site up.
4. Don't use these for security - if you have a genuine need for privacy don't ever use these proxies - use a fast private network, which encrypts like Identity Cloaker or next best is TOR is you have limited funds.

So I hope this has helped a little way to answer some of my many "I need a free UK Proxy" questions, but I'm aware this post has many gaps in it.

Source: anonymous-proxies.org

The Difference Between Anonymous Software

Anonymous Surfing Software

There's a whole range of different software to download and buy which promises to protect your privacy or help you surf anonymously. To be honest it can be extremely confusing but I'd like to try and explain the basic areas.

There are two distinct areas of this software, those that protect your data and browsing on your own PC and those that protect your browsing online. Let's take the first category initially, those products that help protect information on your home PC.

Home Privacy Software

When you browse the internet on your home PC, a huge amount of information gets recorded and logged on your PC. History of web sites you have visted, cookies, urls, images are all stored and cached locally, now the main reason for these is to customise your browsing and make it easier. Cookies help remember usernames and other information from your browsing session on that computer but it is definitely a huge impact on your privacy.

If you share the computer with someone it is fairly simple to spot there browsing patterns and the web sites they have visited. Many of us will have experienced the issues of being logged on automatically to a website we've never visited before. It can get annoying when you are trying to buy surprise presents and gifts for those people.

This generic group of anonymous software is usually called privacy something, or evidence eraser or similar. The software completely wipes out all your surfing records from the PC you are using, wipes cookies, removes histories and some of the advanced stuff actually 'shreds' these details preventing an IT person recovering the data when deleted.

If protecting your privacy from someone who shares your computer is your main priority this is the area you need to be looking at. However you should also remember that nowadays lots of browsers are building in their own privacy functions which perform much the same function IE8 and Firefox both have advanced privacy modes and Google Chrome has an 'Incognito mode' which removes all evidence from your PC quickly and easily,



Online Anonymous Software Protection

In my mind by far the biggest threat on our privacy and why it essential to maintain our anonymity is the online invasion of snoopers, hackers, government surveillance and a myriad of others who covet our online data.

When we visit a web site, view a move or download something we leave behind a huge trail of personal data which is directly linked to our computer and hence us. Initially every thing we do is logged at our ISP logs - this is an exact copy of everything we do online, and I mean everything. These logs are regularly accessed by Governments and agencies to check on our activities for various reasons. Next we leave trails and evidence in every server we pass through, and finally the website we visit will record a huge amount of data about us in their own logs.

HTTP - the Cleartext Protocol

This wouldn't be so dangerous if we had some sort of protection but we don't. Our browsing all takes place in clear text using HTTP, therefore it is instantly readable by anyone and everyone. Your ISP can easily provide a list of every web site you have visited, every picture you've looked and and everything you've downloaded , in fact they are forced to keep this data by legislation in Europe and many other countries. By default we have absolutely no privacy or security online, an extensive profile is being built up of every single one of us who use the internet regularly. It's no wonder people want to surf anonymously with so many people spying on us.

Online Anonymous Software

To protect our information online, many anonymous software programs tend to focus on anonymous proxies. These are servers that sit between our browser and the web sites we visit, the idea is that logs on the web sites we visit have no record of our IP address just that of the Proxy Server we use. This is indeed an important component in maintaining your anonymity online, and these proxies are extremely important. However there is also a great danger, when you use a proxy server you are in fact creating another log on that server of your web browsing so you must trust this service.

Many anonymous software programs simply scan the internet for free anonymous proxies and redirect all your browsing via these.

This is Very Dangerous !

Free anonymous proxies are all over the internet but many of them are accidentally misconfigured servers or worse hacked servers run by identity thieves. They know they can pick up and intercept your browsing is you use these servers which they use to steal your data, passwords and credit card details - DO NOT USE THEM !

It is important to choose anonymous software that runs private controlled and secure proxy servers, that way your data and logs are secure and deleted quickly.

Anonymous Proxies are only Half the Solution

They protect your logs and identity from the web sites you visit but they do nothing to protect your browsing in transit and being logged completely at your ISP. This is the most worry for many of us concerned about privacy online, the ISP is the most complete record available of your browsing, countries across the world are all accessing this data regularly - the UK Government is only one of many preparing to transfer this data to a single database so that agencies can access this information regularly.

To protect against this serious invasion of privacy, then you must find software that actually encrypts your connection as well. This prevents people intercepting and your ISP logs will be completely unreadable, the common solutions are SSL and SSH being used to encrypt your connection. Check that this technology is being used by the anonymous software you use and in case you've forgotten stay away from FREE Anonymous Proxies !

Source: hubpages.com