Not the most literary impressive title for an article about proxies, but it's a question I get asked a lot. Sometimes in real life when I do lectures on being secure online to local schools, but mostly through my proxy web sites and blogs.
What I want to do is to explain some of the reasons that people use proxies and some of the less well know ones.
Ok so I'll start with the main two reasons, these are mostly from (but definitely not exclusively younger surfers). these are to use the proxy to avoid firewalls and restrictions at school, work or college to access certain websites on the internet. Generally these will be sites like Bebo, facebook, Myspace etc which will be blocked by various technical methods.
The next reason will be they have been blocked from some forum or blog somewhere, something will have happened and the administrator will have blocked the IP address they were using when posting to the forum. Using a proxy will give you a different IP address when posting so will effectively circumvent the block.
But there are many more arguably legitimate reasons for using a proxy, perhaps one of the main ones is that of privacy. 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). When you visit virtually every web site your visit is recorded by the web site and at your ISP who log your activity. 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 US media sites like NBC, Hulu and ABC are blocked unless your IP address originates from the USA. You can only watch most UK TV stations online if you are from the UK, otherwise you will be blocked. All these restrictions can be bypassed using proxy servers, if they are configured correctly.
What I want to do is to explain some of the reasons that people use proxies and some of the less well know ones.
Ok so I'll start with the main two reasons, these are mostly from (but definitely not exclusively younger surfers). these are to use the proxy to avoid firewalls and restrictions at school, work or college to access certain websites on the internet. Generally these will be sites like Bebo, facebook, Myspace etc which will be blocked by various technical methods.
The next reason will be they have been blocked from some forum or blog somewhere, something will have happened and the administrator will have blocked the IP address they were using when posting to the forum. Using a proxy will give you a different IP address when posting so will effectively circumvent the block.
But there are many more arguably legitimate reasons for using a proxy, perhaps one of the main ones is that of privacy. 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). When you visit virtually every web site your visit is recorded by the web site and at your ISP who log your activity. 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 US media sites like NBC, Hulu and ABC are blocked unless your IP address originates from the USA. You can only watch most UK TV stations online if you are from the UK, otherwise you will be blocked. All these restrictions can be bypassed using proxy servers, if they are configured correctly.
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