Use a Proxy for Anonymous Surfing

A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary between a client and a destination server. It forwards requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. By using a proxy server, a client can access a destination server without directly connecting to it. Proxy servers can also provide additional features, such as caching, anonymity, and security.

A proxy is primarily designed to provide faster and efficient Internet Access to lots of computers on the same network. They can speed up browsing quite considerably by caching pages that are requested often and keeping a local copy of the web page to distribute. So why would we want to use a tunneling proxy technique well mainly because using a proxy allows the owner to control and restrict what you view.

If everyone browses through a proxy you can control, monitor and record everything the users do through that proxy. Often in a corporate or education environment – you will be forced to use the selected proxy, the settings to change will not be accessible blocked by security.

So what do you do if you want to stop your web browsing being logged and monitored?

You need a Tunneling Proxy

That’s right you need to create a tunnel between you and an external proxy by which you can encrypt and secure all your data. That means it can’t be viewed, logged, recorded or blocked.

There’s a few ways you can do this but most focus on two main tunneling methods – SSL and SSH both provide options. Most commonly SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is used on port 443 and this is the way secure sites are often access like your bank or retail site. I personally use some software called Identity Cloaker which actually uses SSH although this tunnel is created on the port 443 simply because it helps obscure the connection and less often blocked on a company firewall.

So if you create a tunneling proxy outside the local network nothing can read the data from your browsing. All that is visible is an encrypted connection and no urls or other details can be seen.

Depending on the technique you try, it can secure your connection and allow you to access sites that are normally blocked. Although remember to check the information and privacy policy of the network you are using to check it’s ok.

Proxy Web Surfing Information

Here’s the software I use, this actually allows you to punch a hole in the external firewall by tunneling through the corporate proxy and connecting to one of the private anonymous proxies on the internet.

This is the screen where you pick one of the many proxies available to create the SSH tunnel between – the real beauty is that it piggybacks the existing proxy so you get through the firewall as well. I can pick a proxy in any of the many countries available.

Therefore with my tunneling proxy nobody can log my web browsing or what I do online.  What’s more I can  use it to bypass geo-blocking directly from the sites themselves.   You can use a proxy to watch the BBC from outside the UK for instance.

Because all my connections are unreadable then also content filtering won’t be able to block access to any web sites either. You may have seen these running when you try and visit a web site and you get a ‘BLOCKED’ type message instead. These content filters aren’t able to read the data in an SSH tunneling proxy session because it is encrypted so they can’t read the url to block it.

 

 

What’s the Difference Between a VPN and Proxy?

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a private network established via public networks (such as the internet) that allows users to securely send and receive data while remaining anonymous. A VPN creates a secure, encrypted tunnel through which data is transmitted between the user’s device and the VPN server.

A proxy is a server that acts as a middleman between the user and the internet. Proxies can be used to mask a user’s IP address, allowing them to access blocked websites and content that’s not available in their country. Unlike a VPN, a proxy does not encrypt the user’s data, which means the connection is not secure and data can be intercepted.