Probably not the most impressive title for an article, but I do get asked it a lot. Sometimes in real life when people want to erm surf like a ninja, but mostly through my proxy web sites and blogs.
I want to do to explain what people use proxies for including some of the less well know ones.
Lets start with the two main reasons, these are mostly from (but definitely not exclusively younger surfers). You can use the proxy, to avoid firewalls and web surfing restrictions at school, work or college. Generally these will be sites like Bebo, facebook, Myspace etc which will be blocked by various technical methods.
The next one will be they’ve been banned or blocked from a forum or site 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.
There are in fact hundreds of uses for using a proxy server, privacy is perhaps the most important one. Your IP address can be linked directly to the computer you are using, and so if you use one at home to a specific individual (or household). So as you visit a web site, they record your visit, plus the ISP keep a log as well. 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 access most UK TV channels online, only if you are in the UK, otherwise you will be blocked. All these restrictions can be bypassed, using for example a UK proxy for the BBC, if they are configured correctly.
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