Anonymous proxy? Hide yourself online.
By Mike on Mar 5, 2008 in Featured, Hacks/Mods, How to, Internet
Ever want to go somewhere on the net where you shouldn’t be without the “man” knowing? Come on. Get your mind out of the gutter. Think of something like playing fantasy football at work. We all do it. We just don’t want the boss to know how much we do it. If this is the case then you need to use an anonymous proxy server.
A proxy server accepts all request made by you (the user) and redirects them to the website you wish to visit. Basically you send a request to the proxy server for yahoo’s fantasy football site. Instead of going directly to yahoo, and thus being logged or blocked by your corporate/school network, the request is sent to the proxy server which in turn gets the page for you and returns the results to you. Behind the scenes the request looks like a random page from your computer to anything monitoring where you go on the web. It also hides the IP address you are using from the destination you are going to. Useful huh? I can hear the wheels turning.
Below I have include a list of a few of the anonymous proxies I use. Just enter the site you want to visit in the form.
Some of these may be blocked if your corporation/school subscribes to a commercial black list which bans them. In that case you need fresh proxy servers that haven’t been included in those lists yet.
These sites have to be added to your browser settings.
Setup proxy settings in IE.
In IE goto Tools > Internet Options.
Select the Connection Tab and click the Lan Settings button and check off “Use proxy server for you LAN”
Enter the IP or DNS address of the proxy server you selected and the port if required.
Setup proxy settings in Firefox.
Open the Preference dialog and goto Advanced.
Select the Network Tab and select Settings.
Check Manual Proxy Settings and enter the IP address or DNS address of the chosen proxy and the port number.
Click here to get a list of fresh anonymous proxies.
Popularity: 14% [?]
WebDiggin | Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
Actually… that’s a very cool way to do it. I’m new to the game, and just wanted to hear what your thoughts were about TOR and Privoxy. I checked out the wikipedia article which talked about some of the vulnerabilities of using a chain of an anonymous proxy - mainly that the person at the last server could listen to the traffic and pull out passwords. (i.e. Anonymity is not Security). Presumably it’s the same deal here?
Do people use anonymous proxy servers to game services like Alexa. If each IP address is a vote for popularity, couldn’t you mess up their rating system? (Although seems like a lot of work)
Mike | Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
You are exactly right about the use of a chain of anonymous proxies and the ability to steal your info. That’s why I used fantasy football as an example and not your bank account.
Tor is the real answer to hiding yourself online but from the point of view of this article I figured you wouldn’t be able to install any kind of client on the system you were using. Tor traffic at work would surely alert someone, somewhere, although they would never be able to tell exactly what you were doing.
As for alexa. Part of their measurement comes from the alexa tool bar being installed in your browser. Although I’m not sure, I’m willing to bet that has some type of id of it’s own. Strangely enough it seems that simply installing the tool bar and visiting your own site will bump your rank better then any other method I have read about. This site didn’t rank at all until I installed the toolbar.
You could still use a bunch of proxies to bump your unique visitor stats and game some of the blog directory ranking but, like you said, that’s more work then its worth.
Thanks for the comment and the visit.
Mike
zamzam | Apr 9, 2008 | Reply
welcome 2 ma crib