Web Proxies Explained

Here we will explain how proxies enable you to bypass firewalls and hide your urls and IPs. This is also how proxies are able to allow you to use social networking sites such as facebook, hi5 and myspace from work.

Bypassing Corporate Firewalls and Government Firewalls

Let us look at the image below. You are behind a corporate firewall and trying to access a site called www.sexysite.com, which your admins are blocking.
  1. When you try to access www.sexysite.com from your browser, the request first goes to the firewall. The firewall then blocks it.
  2. When you go through the proxy, the firewall sees www.proxy.com. As this is not a banned site, the firewall allows it.
  3. Once the request reaches www.proxy.com, the proxy will fetch the data from www.sexysites.com and return it. All this time the firewall thinks you have made a reques to www.proxy.com

Hiding Surfing Habits from Governments and Sites

Let us look at the image below. You are trying to access the site www.sexysite.com from home. Let us assume that the government is tracking users to this site.
  1. When you try to access www.sexysite.com from your browser, the request goes through an ISP router. This router will detect what site you are visiting and store the information.
  2. The site www.sexysite.com will be able to detect your location through your source IP. Therefore both the site and the government know what you are doing
  3. When you access www.sexysite.com through your proxy, the router sees a request to www.proxy.com. The router does not know that you are accessing www.sexysite.com
  4. The request goes to the proxy
  5. Then the proxy makes a request to www.sexysite.com. The site then sees the proxies source IP. Your original source IP is not available. This way the url you are visiting and your source IP is kept hidden
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