How Safe Are Web Proxies

When you connect through one of these proxies, everything you enter and everything the end website sends back is visible to the proxy. If you login to a mail account or a social networking site, or even a banking site, the proxy has visibility of the usernames and passwords. Here are some basic steps you should follow when using a proxy.
  • Never ever login to a banking or financial site through these proxies. Anysite that has something to do with money, should go direct. Even paypal
  • Try to use trusted sites as much as possible. Sites hosted by opensource people or sites hosted by enthusiastic individuals that are recommended by friends.
  • If the site has a lot of ads and banners, you should be a bit more careful.

Anonymity

Web page based proxies, unlike conventional proxies are inherently less efficient. This is because a web-page based proxy has to grab all kinds of urls off web pages and modify them. If it misses a URL then the browser will request the content directly, bypassing the proxy and exposing your IP and location. The better the proxy engine the less chance of this happening.

If anonymity is a life and death situation the you should be using the 'true proxy' that requires you to change your broswer settings.
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