Surf the Web Anonymously with Proxies

One of the easiest ways to hide your computer, and thus hide yourself, online is to use proxies. Proxies act as a filter between you and the rest of the Web. You can, for instance, connect to the Web through a proxy in Japan even though you're in the United States. Surfing the web anonymously isn't as hard or as intimidating as it looks. Once you find yourself a suitable proxy number, all you have to is click a few buttons and punch your number in to start surfing with your proxy.

Steps

Setting Up a Proxy in Mozilla Firefox

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox.
  2. Click the Firefox option on the upper-left corner.
  3. Click on the Options menu, and choose Options.
  4. Access Connection Settings. Click the Advanced tab, then the Network tab, then Settings.
  5. Chose the manual proxy configuration option. In the HTTP proxy field, enter your proxy server IP address. In the port field, enter your port number.
  6. Click OK to finish.

Setting Up a Proxy in Microsoft Internet Explorer

  1. Open Internet Explorer.
  2. Click on the Tools menu in the upper-right corner, and select Internet Options.
  3. Click the Connections tab.
  4. Click the LAN Settings button in the lower portion of the window.
  5. Check "Use a proxy server for your LAN," then enter your proxy IP address and port number.
  6. Click OK.

Setting Up a Proxy in Google Chrome

  1. Open Google Chrome.
  2. Click on the wrench in the upper-right corner.
  3. Select Settings.
  4. Click "Show advanced settings..." at the bottom of the screen.
  5. Click the "Change proxy settings..." button.
  6. Click LAN Settings near the bottom of the window.
  7. Check "Use a proxy server for your LAN," and enter your proxy IP address and port number.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Click OK again in the Internet Options window.

Setting Up a Proxy in Safari in Windows

  1. Open Safari.
  2. Open the Settings menu. You can find this either by clicking Safari -> Preferences, or clicking the gear in the upper-right corner of the browser and selecting Preferences.
  3. Click the Advanced tab.
  4. Click the Change Settings button.
  5. Click the LAN Settings button. You should be in the Connections tab.
  6. Check "Use a proxy server for your LAN," and enter your proxy IP address and port number.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Click OK again in the Internet Options window.

Setting Up a Proxy in Safari on Mac

  1. Open Safari.
  2. Open the Settings menu. You can find this either by clicking Safari -> Preferences, or clicking the gear in the upper-right corner of the browser and selecting Preferences.
  3. Click the Advanced tab.
  4. Click the Change Settings button.
  5. Check Automatic Proxy Configuration.
  6. Enter the URL of the proxy configuration file in the text box at right.
  7. Uncheck Use Passive FTP Mode.
  8. Click OK.

Using Web-Based Proxies

  1. Look for web-based proxies online. While the selection of online proxies is constantly changing, a quick search online should help you to find a good currently available option.
  2. Open the given proxy service in your browser. You don’t need to use proxy settings in your browser.
  3. Enter the URL you want to visit anonymously. The web-based proxy should have a clear interface for doing this. When you enter and confirm your desired URL, it should allow you to browse that site anonymously.

Tips

  • An IP Address is essentially your address on the internet. If they know where you live, they can target you, but the chances of someone targeting you are very slim. Every website you visit can see your IP Address.
  • When you use a proxy, you deliberately choose to trust the proxy owner: (s)he can log, store and save anything that is passing through.
  • A proxy is generally useful to access a website from another country or to encrypt things you don't want your local administrator to see (if used at work, school, etc.). In this case, the proxy should allow you to encrypt the data from and to your computer. However, by doing so, you might break a number of laws and/or school/workplace rules.

Warnings

  • Proxies are controlled by some random unknown people: if you use a proxy, keep in mind that the proxy owner can log everything you are doing, hijack website sessions, catch credit card numbers, etc.
  • The US Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and the EU Cybercrime convention (2001) both clearly define it as a crime to use an open proxy.
  • Open proxies are very useful to crackers: they can capture any unencrypted (using HTTP as opposed to HTTPS) session cookies and credentials that are going through them.

Related Articles

Retrieved from "https://kipkis.com/index.php?title=Surf_the_Web_Anonymously_with_Proxies&oldid=268366"