What is a proxy?

The word “proxy”, by dictionary definition, is “the function or power of somebody authorized to act for another person”. When you want something done but do not want to do it yourself, you need a proxy. Basically, that’s the same principle with proxy websites. When you’re using proxy, you’re actually asking it to do things for you – opening websites.

What difference does it make?

First, using a proxy hides you from your intended destination – because the proxy fetches the web pages, you are hidden in the process. Your “destination”, the website you are viewing, has no way of knowing that it’s actually you who are requesting the information because it sees the proxy. This eliminates the possibility of that website getting a hold of your personally identifiable information, such as your IP address. Second, it hides you from yourself – that is, your network or your internet service provider. Both will have no way of knowing what web pages you are opening because they see the proxy.

Where can I find them?

Because proxy sites can open other blocked sites, they are often blocked themselves. There are many ways to find unblocked proxies. First, you can do is a quick google search on the keyword “proxy” or websites that provide lists of proxies, such as proxy.org. This will show you the most popular proxies online. The downside is, that since they are popular, your company’s IT department may have already blocked the proxy sites themselves. There’s a plethora of proxy sites for you to try out. However, the downside is the same as above. One last option, which is the most recommended, is just to keep your ears open. Ask your friends or co-workers, “what are good, unblocked proxies?” This method usually works because the knowledge is regarded as a secret – nobody among you will share it to the management or IT department, hence it will not be blocked.

How do I use them?

A proxy website usually consists of one text box – this is where you type in the website that you want to open. Just click “Go” or hit Enter after typing the URL. Aside from the text box, there are also a couple of checkboxes, which control the behavior of the proxy. Two of the most common and useful check boxes are: Encode URL and Encode Page. The first one is useful to ensure that none of the words in the URL of the website you are opening can be read. For example, the text “google.com” will appear instead as a random string of characters, such as “vswe1koo29fhalcba3nr73ncqcn”. The second checkbox does the same thing but to the actual contents of the page. These two are important to ensure that the content filters set up by your IT department cannot detect key words that will trigger the blocking of the websites you are trying to visit.

What are the risks?

Website proxies are great, but they can also provide great risks to the user. Though the website you’re visiting through a proxy cannot see you, the proxy itself can. Your IP address and other information are visible to the proxy. Proxies must never be used when you have to deal with confidential information online.

Now you can finally see those photos that you wanted to see, or watch YouTube clips when you want to relax for a while during a hard day of working at the office – thanks to proxies. With a little patience in finding good proxies and knowledge in using them, you can always get what you want out of the web.

Browsing the web is among the major activities of people nowadays. However, have we thought that when browsing through the World Wide Web (3W) we are somehow giving those unscrupulous individuals or groups out there some reasons to lurk out our personal information? Can the browser we use secure the data that we will send to the server of the site we are trying to visit?

The idea of anonymous browsing spurs the thought of anonymous proxy, which helps protect an individual’s Internet privacy that will make secure connections to business partners, friends, or relatives located in different parts of the world.

Anonymous proxy works as an agent that will connect to a proxy server, which then acts as the bridge between your computer and the server of the website you would like to visit, that will hide your identity over the Internet. The proxy server is nothing ordinary as it offers defensive measures to secure the information you send across the 3W’s thus, allowing you to connect to the Internet without the fear of being traced as it will hide your Internet Protocol (IP) address.

With anonymous browsing, the Internet freedom, you deserve, can best be served. Surfing the web could never be worry-free – that is, you can never be so much concerned of your credit card being used by someone else.

There are a lot of proxy providers out there, which offer anonymous browsing. Some offer software or shareware application programs packaged with some other add-ons that need to be downloaded and installed while others offer only plug-ins for any available browser, there is. While most are being sold, there are still free proxy servers out there.

A proxy server has different types and functions. However, one can never go wrong with choosing the right proxy server to use when reading reviews from online users. Choose only the one that can be trusted where you can be confident that hackers are way out of your league.

Internet to some may be still is a secure environment, since they may think that the transfer of information is electronic and retrieving such information will not be an easy task. However, now, one can no longer be secured online since as new technologies are developed online, even ways to intervene or steal information online has also become rampant. There are reports and studies, which conclude that there are some people who experienced that their information is attempted to be stolen. The most common place where these kinds of scenarios occur is when people make transactions using their credit and debit cards online or online banking. With these problems, there are several companies, which offer anonymous browsing solutions to solve these dilemmas at a price.

A lot of people still don’t gain a full understanding as to the importance of anonymously browsing websites online because one of the possibilities is that there are technical terminologies, which are not that easy to be understood by most people, even if they are educated about it. Anonymous browsing solutions being developed by some companies allow one’s online information will be hidden and the application does not show the real IP address one’s computer is using as well as the various websites one has visited. In short, your web browsing experience is kept secure and private. This is being accomplished with the aid of the different kinds of anonymous proxy servers being offered.

There are proxy servers, which are offered for free but going to these servers’ websites, and you can you the server to visit the website you want. These proxy servers are usually used by people in a network where there are some websites, which are blocked like in schools or company. These proxy websites provide a portal for one to go to the blocked websites without being detected by the IT department of their company. However, these proxy websites limit what a person can do with the blocked websites they visited. Some of the features they can’t perform are sending information such as online messages, since they are only limited to view the site. This is just a simple solution for people who wanted to visit websites, which are blocked without having to worry that they are caught trying to access these sites online.

For people who wanted a more secure web browsing, they may opt to sign for memberships to any available solutions for anonymous browsing online. With the value they pay, they also get more benefits and services by signing up for these memberships. What these proxies do is that they direct your internet traffic to many other proxies making your specific traffic impossible to be determined by people who are trying to track it down.

Though the concept of internet security may not fully understand by people and how it works technically, but for them what matters is their identity will be secured and that’s all that matters. There could be many new technologies, which may come out in the market to provide security with your web browsing as long as these products work to prevent information theft, it could be best to rely on these for the sake of confidentiality of your information for your own good.

The terminologies used in web blogging are quite colloquial. The term blog was actually invented by Peter Merholz. It does not only refer to the web site wherein you actually put in your entries, it also means the act of putting in the entries that you have come up with. In simpler terms, the word blog may be used as a verb or as a noun depending on how it is used. With regards to the colorful history and the birth of web blog, it has actually evolved from the online diary. Because of that, web blogging became what it is today, a worldwide craze and sensation.

It has been noted earlier that web blogging has numerous types. Its type depends on what inputs or contents found in the web site and the manner in which the inputs or contents are expressed in the web site. One of the types of web blogging is personal blogs. Personal blogs are probably the most common type of web blogging. Personal web bloggers post their blogs immaterial of whether someone in the internet will read them or not. They post about their experiences about life in general, their points of view about politics, and pretty much everything within the realm of their interests. The most important thing to remember about personal blogs is that it is based on the preference of the web blogger. It is the web blogger’s expression of his or her feelings through shout-outs and commentaries found in the web site. Another type of web blogging is classified in terms of the genre. It may be focused on politics, tourism, sports, music, fashion, and many more. Web blogs are also classified in terms of what electronic device is used as a medium in the composition of web blogs and in terms of the type of media used in the web site. It may be with the usage of videos, pictures, and many more.

Web blogging is, in fact, unique  in its own right because an individual can  make his comments and opinions be read by the millions of people in the world. It is like making a diary and making it an open book to the public. Its impact to the society and most of all to the youth is very significant. The youth is now using web blogs to express their feelings and socialize to other people. Hence, it has somehow created a sort of change into their lifestyle. Web blogs are also generally healthy since it promotes the generation of ideas and expression of points of view. Therefore, it only requires less parental supervision even in the case of children. Everyone will surely agree that it is a lot better than allowing your children to just play video games all day. Web blogs are actually a good source of recent news because you now how news easily spreads in the society. As a generalization, web blogs are not only gaining popularity in the internet, it has also made an impact to the society.

Do you want to know how to prevent these things from happening? This can be solved by having a good security habit in using your computer, which is done in several ways. First is you always had to remember that internet connection is not the only reason why viruses, malwares, and unauthorized access exist. This can also happen even when you are offline. If you have a computer at home make sure to prevent or limit other people from using your computer.   Ideally, it should only be for your own personal use. The tendency if there are several people using your computer is that they may have an easy access on your personal data in which they intentionally or unintentionally delete some of it, or may transfer infected files from the use of data storage device.

If you are to go out of your house or your office you may lock your computer through the use of a password. You may do this, even if you are away from your computer for a minute. Such a short time can still allow others to easily sit on your computer and access some personal information. The next important thing you can do is to turn off your internet connection when you are not using it. Now day internet devices like DSL and cable modems are designed to make the user online all the time. Actually, it doesn’t have an automatic power system. In this case, it puts the computer at risk for viruses and malwares. These dangerous materials tend to automatically scan the internet for some computers connected online. If in case your computer is detected then viruses or malwares tend to attack your system. This process can run itself leaving you unaware. Some of them would pop up items that allow you to choose from a given option. If you experienced this you must not click any options from the pop up. This is because that might give the virus or a malware the advantage to access further on your system. To prevent this you may delete the pop up item using the task manager. It can be easily done by pressing Alt+Ctrl+delete.

The next thing you can do is to check your security setting. You must make sure that it is properly functioning and not infected by a virus. You may also check your computer’s status. If your system is running slow then there might already be a virus in your computer. If you noted that there are some unusual folders or files that automatically installed this might also be a sign of an infected system. If you want to have the important data secured and safe from invasion you may store them in other storage formats. Examples of these are flash drives, compact disk, and other storage devices.

Aside from the above mentioned interventions, there is also another way to solve such a problem. This is by using an anti-virus or anti-malware software. Before you purchase this software make sure that they are genuine. Avoid a free download of this software because most of them are illegally copied and some of its files are corrupted… This means that the anti-virus or the anti-malware will not properly work and some of them will even destroy your system. If your computer has plenty of application or programs, which are not in use it is better if you will delete them or store them in a flash disk. This is because it can result to a slow process of your computer, which can give a big opportunity for a virus or a malware to invade into the system. We must be very careful in using our computers. Get updated and intervene as soon as possible…