Benefits of Proxies

We use proxies on a daily basis, but not many of us know their functionality and importance. A proxy is a valuable tool that helps you connect to the web and protects your identity. Proxies can also be termed as a barrier that keeps your relevant information from being accessed by a website.

If you go to the internet settings, you’ll see ‘proxy’ as an option there. The proxy settings allow you to set up a proxy or control the traffic according to your requirements. In this post, we’ll discuss everything related to the proxies, and the reason why you should use them. So if you feel embarrassed among tech-geeks, this is the time to gain some technical insight.

What is a Proxy?

A proxy is a hub that processes the internet requests and returns the requested information to the client. It acts as an intermediary or a middleman to send and receive the request message and response message. The message can contain anything, for example, a request to connect to a website or any other resource. This all starts when you type the web address in the browser’s bar which sends a message to the server. A proxy works in the following way:

· The proxy connects to the server when a web address is typed, or any other request message is sent.

· The proxy server then filters the request according to the guidelines.

· After verification, the request is fulfilled and is sent to the appropriate server.

· The response message is sent to the user in the form of a website or some other information.

Proxies also act as a mask for hiding the IP addresses, and they are being used for bypassing geological restrictions and censorships of particular websites. There is Original Content Servers (OCS) on the web which is accessed by the proxy servers to connect the users to them for downloading or accessing particular information or detail.

The user requests to these servers and the proxies act as a hub or intermediaries to process the request. The requested content in the form of a website or file is placed on the cache, and the proxy picks it and provides it to the user who has asked for it. In this way, proxies act as middlemen to provide information to the users. However, the primary function of a proxy is to change the IP address.

Types of Proxies:

There are two main types of proxies; HTTP and SOCKS. The HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and SOCKS stands for Socket Secure. These proxies are further divided into many types. Following is a brief introduction to these two types of proxies and their variants.

HTTP Proxies:

The HTTP proxies are the most commonly used ones. The primary function of these proxies depends on the use of the TCP protocol and the system through which the browsers work. The HTTP proxy transfers the information from the client to the server through a port. The standard ports used are 3128, 80, and 8080. Http proxies are smart, and they can understand the data that is being shared between the client and the server; thus the information doesn’t remain private.

When a user opens a URL resource, the HTTP client sends a request to the HTTP server, and this way data is sent to the browser. The HTTP proxies allow the user to receive information in the form of text, images, audio, and video and also speed up the process. These proxies also restrict the access to particular websites or data after filtering them. Also, using these proxies, the users can limit the connection speed, monitor the traffic, and keep logs. Following are the main types of HTTP proxies:

· The free or public proxies are available free of cost and can be used for performing primary less secure internet activities such as surfing on the web. These proxies provide a deficient speed because of a large number of people using it.

· A few people share the shared proxies unlike the public proxies, and thus there is a slight drop in speed only.

· The dedicated or private proxies are the most secure ones, and they offer a speedy service too.

The https proxies are the more secure ones, and they stand for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. These proxies support the SSL connection and can be used for sending and receiving the private and sensitive information. Most of the HTTP proxies allow logging of data by the internet service providers which can leak the information and ends the anonymity of the user too. Therefore, https proxies are used for additional security as the data is encrypted.

SOCKS proxies:

Socks proxies are very secure because they don’t interpret the data and thus the data remains private when it is requested or responded. The socks proxies use tunneling method to share the data, and the data is protected because of the advanced transfer protocol used. The standard ports used for these proxies are 1080 and 1081.

The socks proxies hide the IP address, and they don’t reveal the identity so that anonymity is maintained. Whichever website you’re accessing, the website owner or server won’t be able to know your location or other information. Following are the variants of the socks proxies:

· The Socks 4 proxies that support TCP only.

· The Socks 5 proxies that support TCP and UDP both, and can be used as an additional security measure for performing highly confidential tasks.

While a user is using the socks proxies, the activities that he/she performs on the internet will remain completely anonymous and transparent. These proxies can be used for performing those tasks that require high security such as for conducting online transactions, online shopping, and entering the credit card info for any purpose. So, if you have any highly confidential task to perform, you should always use the socks five proxies to remain on the safe side.

Benefits of proxies:

Before you buy proxies, you should know about the benefits that they can offer you. Following are some of the unique benefits of using proxies:

1. Bypass the company’s restrictions:

Let’s assume you work at a company and there you aren’t able to access your favorite websites such as Amazon, YouTube or any social media ones. Employers do that because they don’t want their employees to engage in irrelevant activities and focus more on work.

That’s good too, but during work hours there comes many situations when you get bored and need a break. You can use the restricted websites after meeting your daily deadline too. At such times you crave for some entertainment by browsing your favorite sites.

Proxies help in these situations as they can easily bypass the restrictions imposed by the employers. Using a proxy in such a case is very easy. You have to buy a proxy from a proxy provider and enter the details into the browser’s proxy settings.

Doing so will enable you to use the restricted websites, and the employer will not even know about it. However, you must make sure that you aren’t using free proxies for this purpose as they can cause the system to get infected. Using shared or private proxies is an excellent choice in this regard.

2. Protect your identity:

When a user connects to a particular website, the website gets all the information regarding your activities and your status too. Whenever you link to a site, it will receive your IP address and other information related to your identification. The site can even access your location, and this information is just used for analyzing the viewer’s data. However, if you want some privacy when you’re performing online activities, you can use a proxy.

When you use a proxy, the proxy will mask your IP address so that the other websites won’t be able to access it. When your IP address isn’t linked to you, you can perform your entire internet surfing activities anonymously and freely. You can then have all the benefits of anonymity because no website will be able to keep logs of your details when you’re using a proxy.

3. Bypass geological restrictions:

Want to access a website from another country? Can’t access any site due to geological limitation? Well, this is where the proxies shine. Many websites have geological limits because of some reason; maybe they don’t want people from other countries to view their content. When you try to access any such website, you won’t be able to see the content.

However, if you use a proxy, the proxy will trick the site and make you available in the country from where you can access it. In other words, the proxy will provide the IP address from a remote location which you can use to access the content of the website. This means you don’t have to quit a particular site just because you aren’t present in that country.

4. Create multiple social media accounts:

Social media apps and websites are very beneficial tools, but most of them will not let you create more than one account. These websites track the IP address, and then you get flagged for creating so many reports, this can also result in the shutdown of all of your accounts.

Instead of taking the risk, it is better to buy proxies and use them for creating multiple social media accounts. You can use a separate proxy for each of the accounts that you set up on the social media network. Various social media accounts are very beneficial from the business point of view as they allow you to market your product or service differently. You can quickly increase your online presence this way by using a proxy.

5. Scrape data:

If you’re a business owner, you might benefit from the plethora of information that is available on the websites. Scraping website data is beneficial, especially if you want large amounts of data saved in your system. Amazon scraping is quite famous among people, and it helps you earn a lot of money too. However, some websites can detect the scraping of data, and when they notice that some bot is using the site for data scraping, they shut down the access. For data scraping, you need an IP address, and if you don’t have any, you can’t scrape data.

You can buy multiple proxies and use them to scrape data. You can rotate these proxies or let the scraper rotate them to avoid being caught. A proxy will also allow you to use a scraping tool such as the Scrapebox which will make the task much easier for you. This is a fantastic tool, and it will scrape everything from a website.

6. Get rid of target advertising:

Target advertising can be annoying when you’re surfing the web. When you’re browsing the websites, the advertisers collect your data and send you more ads according to your interests. They get to know about your benefits by analyzing what you mostly search and which websites you mostly visit.

However, this gets annoying when you don’t need such ads, and they keep on appearing frequently. To avoid such ads, you can buy proxies which can filter the content and block all the ads. However, make sure that you aren’t using a free proxy as it will only increase the number of ads.

Conclusion:

Proxies have numerous other benefits which we didn’t discuss in this post. Such as you can cop sneakers online, automate blog comments, have multiple websites for SEO purposes, and get more followers on social media using the proxies.

One thing to keep in mind is that the benefits discussed above are for the paid proxies because free proxies aren’t secure and fast. The good thing is that the paid proxies are not very expensive, but they offer excellent value for money so that you can enjoy surfing the website without any restrictions.