Dude I Really Need a Proxy
Probably not the best title for a proxy article, but it’s an often asked question. In real life I get asked when people want to surf anonymously, but mostly through my proxy web sites and blogs.
What I want to do is to explain some of the reasons that people use proxies and some of the less well know ones.
Ok so I’ll start with the main two reasons, these are mostly from (but definitely not exclusively younger surfers). these are to use the proxy to avoid firewalls and restrictions at school, work or college to access certain websites on the internet. Generally these will be the social networking sites like facebook, Myspace etc which will be blocked in companies and schools.
The next reason will be they have been blocked from some forum or blog somewhere, something will have happened and the administrator will have blocked the IP address they were using when posting to the forum. If you use a proxy, your own IP address is shielded and any ban will be bypassed.
However their are many arguably more legitimate reasons proxy use, perhaps one of the main ones is that of privacy. That IP address can be traced directly to your account and the computer you are using. When you visit virtually every web site your visit is recorded by the web site and at your ISP who log your activity. Of course many people are not very happy about this and if they want to protect their privacy they’ll use a proxy server.
There are many more reasons but I’ll finish on a growing use which is to circumvent the use of geotargeting. This is the process where the content you are allowed access to is dependent upon what country you are from. So many media sites like
BBC Iplayer, NBC, Hulu and ABC are blocked unless your IP address originates from the USA. You can only watch most UK TV stations online if you are from the UK, otherwise you will be blocked. All these restrictions can be bypassed, using for example a Uk proxies for the BBC, if they are configured correctly.
