The dangers of free or anonymous proxy servers.

Doing a search on the net regarding safe surfing, anonymous surfing or on how to unblock web sites yields a plethora of advice. A lot of that advice concerns the use of free or anonymous proxy servers. On the surface it looks like a great deal. For free you get to be anonymous, unblock web sites and be safe all at the same time. However, looks are deceiving and free proxy servers have a very dark side to them.

Any type of proxy that takes all of your and other users traffic and redirects it requires a large internet connection. It requires significant bandwidth to deliver the information back to you, and all the other users in a reasonable amount of time. The problem with a lot of bandwidth is that it costs a lot of money.  The bandwidth cost doesn’t even take into account the cost of the servers and maintenance. Running a secure, fast an reliable proxy is an expensive proposition if done right.

The question now becomes how can people put out all these expensive proxy servers and provide the service for free?  The answer clearly is that they have found a different way to pay for the costs of the service. Legitimate Personal VPN services that are professionally managed, secure and provide unlimited bandwidth will always charge a fee for their service to cover these costs.

Many fledging entrepreneurs create proxy servers in their home off of their DSL or cable modem connections. As most people are aware, home connections are not symmetric. Your download speed is always much higher then your upload speed. Since a proxy server has to download and upload at the same speed in order to work this restricts the bandwidth to the slower of the two numbers. However, they don’t’ really care about performance. Their goal is to stuff the session with advertisements that you click on which generates money. Since they are offering almost no bandwidth and the connections are seriously slow their costs are minimal. The concept is that while you are waiting you will click on some ads. In the mean time they have access to all of your surfing information.

All proxy servers get blocked quickly by most web filters. This results in dwindling revenue for the entrepreneur. The solution is to sign up for a new domain name, rename the server and spam the forums with the latest "fresh proxy". This repeats over and over again.

However, the bigger problem is that most proxy servers are run by hackers, either individuals or ones employed by rouge governments engaged in spying. Their profit is in stealing your information and getting access to your computer.

Have you ever used a free proxy server and wondered why they seem to disappear all the time? Some of it is the home entrepreneur described above trying to unblock his latest creation and dropping the old one. But a good part of this is because the servers are set up at hosting companies using stolen credit cards. When they are found out to be fraudulent, they are shut down by the hosting companies.

Hackers commit many illegal acts, including credit card fraud. They steal your data while you're connected to their proxy server and hope to get personal information, in order to acquire credit cards in your name.

All hackers regardless of whether they are individuals or government sponsored need to cover their tracks. The best way to cover your tracks in this world is to do the crime through some else’s computer. The easiest way to do this is to create a chain of computers that are under their control but which belong to unsuspecting people. When they use your computer to attack others they ensure that your IP address gets logged as the place where the hack originated. By using the free proxy server just once you open yourself up to having programs installed on your computer that give the hackers this access whenever they want.

At the end of the day using a free or anonymous proxy server is pretty much guaranteed to have your identity stolen, allow your computer to be taken over or put you in violation of laws against hacking.