Proxy Server: The Complete Guide

Want to know what is a Proxy server? Here are the complete details about Proxies like what is proxy, proxy types, benefits of proxies, proxy Vs VPN, list of private proxies, etc.,

Have you ever been tired of trying to access some websites, when you face the message this webpage is not available or ‘this website/URL has been blocked and would like to access the same website?

The best way to access a blocked website is by using proxy websites or Best VPN services like NordVPN(Special Discounted Link). These six Best Private Proxies will help For Anonymous Browsing.

What is a Proxy Server?

Proxy Server

Basically, they are machines or servers that accept web requests and forward them to the destination through their server. Proxy servers keep your computer separate from the destination web server.

What does that mean? It means that you will show up as anonymous to the web server, so as far as that site knows, you have never visited the site. In simple words, Proxy hides your IP and displays IP from one of their servers.

VPN is also similar in features but the functionality is different. You can use a maximum of five simultaneous connections with a VPN service. But you can use up to 2000 simultaneous connections using Proxies.

A proxy acts as the go-between your computer and your internet traffic’s ultimate destination. The traffic goes from your computer, through various hops and servers until it reaches the proxy server. The proxy server, will in turn re-broadcast the traffic to the ultimate traffic address destination. The website (destination) you are accessing will be able to see the proxy server’s IP address and not your actual IP address. Internet traffic will then flow back to the proxy server and back to your system.

A proxy can be accessed:

  • As a stand-alone program
  • Directly through the web
  • As a browser extension

Proxies are used for internet services and browsing. However, they must be installed and configured for very application use. There are different types of proxies, some for web traffic and others agnostic of the type of protocols that go through their servers. No matter the kind of proxy server, they all serve the same purpose – Altering your IP address!

Proxies are good at hiding your IP address and assist in accessing any geo-restricted content. If for instance, you login into a proxy server from a particular country, the destination website will think that the traffic has originated from that specific country. Oxylabs has a good way of getting around and explaining what a proxy is, so we urge you to go see their article.

Types of Proxies

There are all sorts of types of proxies, but here are the most common ones:

SOCKS Proxies – Used to tunnel kinds of traffic which could include messenger or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) traffic.

HTTP Proxies – As the name suggest, they’re used for HTTP traffic.

Filtering Proxies – Commonly found at work in different organizations and is used to block access to websites to prevent a large bandwidth wasting. They are NOT used for privacy.

However, there are mainly three types of proxies i.e; public, private & shared. Public proxies can be used by anyone.  A shared, or Semi-Dedicated proxy is used by a group of people in limited numbers. They’re usually faster than the public. If you are looking for a high speed with more security, then a shared proxy is the best option, because the shared proxy includes a dedicated IP address only which is its unique feature.

Mostly, people prefer private proxies which is the best as it allows users to do anonymous surfing and as well as protects your business privacy information, location, and IP address from other sites to avoid banning you to access those websites. However, you can change the IP address. By using this method, you can access all the websites and also get information from those sites without banning you.

Check the proxy sites while using them. With the spam links your PC may slow down or dead proxies will be seen which harm your PC. They will steal your details from Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and other account login details.

If you use a fast proxy, it can provide a boost to the internet connection and you can browse/download quickly or watch videos on YouTube easily. So, if you want to use a private proxy, it is highly recommended to use only those sites which are safe, secure, fast proxies and add new proxy IP addresses frequently to their proxy list.

Proxy Categories

Also, there is one category that goes for all, in which proxies are categorized:

Anonymous – Basically what a proxy helps you do; stay anonymous. You can either be elite or disguised.

As an elite proxy user, the webserver won’t be able to see that you’re a proxy and it will give you full access to its contents.

As a disguised proxy user, the webserver can see that you’re a proxy and may limit the content you can see or may block you completely from using the site.

How Can I get Proxy?

There are many places from which you can acquire proxies. There are even online, free ones that anyone can use. Of course, if you want maximum security and quality services, you should go with private proxies like Blazing Proxies.

However, please note that usually free proxies will collect logs and keep them, so your data won’t be very safe with them. If you’re going with a private proxy, check their ToS and see if they’re clearly saying they do not collect logs, so you can have maximum privacy.

Why Proxies? Benefits of Proxy

The proxy acts as a medium between you and the website you’re trying to access. It can hide your true identities like MAC and IP addresses. It can open any sites that are blocked.

The proxies are used for many reasons like be for accessing sneaker sites, black-hat SEO, white-hat SEO, data gathering, website scraping, SEO ranking, surfing the internet, streaming content, torrent, social media sites, monitoring your competition, testing advertisements, etc.

Let us see the benefits of using Proxy.

1. Selected Contents

You might have stumbled on some websites wherein you found out it’s not accessible in your country, or have heard a friend who told you that some social media sites (e.g. Google Docs and Facebook in China) are banned from being browsed in their place that’s only one of what Proxy does. It may filter contents accessible to you, or in the company, you work with, or even in an entire country. This may be used either for security measures or for example in an institution, prohibiting the use of social media sites will create more productive time for its employees.

2. Secured Privacy

Benefits of proxy

Instead of using your own IP Address, Proxy will use its own IP address, which will prevent detecting cookies and avoid tracking of websites you visit. It will also protect your personal computers from getting hacked or getting malicious and dangerous malware that came from the internet.

3. Internet Performance

As mentioned earlier, a Proxy server saves previously accessed content from all computers in a specific place connected in the same network so that the next time someone will search for that specific page, it’ll show instantly, minimizing the file size of the content, time consumed to load the information, and makes the internet browsing experience more convenient.

4. Web-Developer Friendly

A quality-driven website is a must for any website developer, thus thorough testing and quality assurance are done to meet the expectations of clients. Proxy helps these web developers by having a preview of their created website according to regions, thus specific features like language will be available to see if the website created is user-friendly and accessible to the prospective viewers of the site in that specific country.

5. Reverse Proxy for your Confidential Information

stop hacking using proxy

Through the reverse proxy, you’ll be able to transfer your sensitive data to internal servers and keep it away from possible hacking and attacks that may lead to the spread of confidential data. Since saving your data in hard drives is still a great risk for it may lead to public dissemination of projects, payroll, finance matters that are deemed to not be disclosed to any third party, doing reverse proxy will prevent such events from happening.

6. Marginalizes Expenses

Still, the use of Reverse Proxy, allows companies and institutions to downsize their expenses for all servers used by the company may be included in one internal network, thus allowing services for both internal and external clients.

7. Hassle-free Maintenance

The most common dilemma of any company with their server is that it can create such a big loss in case it needs to go down for quite some time to fix errors, bugs, or maintenance. Fortunately, with the Proxy server, any maintenance or replacement in the backend will not completely affect your users and the operation of the company.

8. Faster Loading of Information

It was previously mentioned how Proxy increases productivity in a working area by prohibiting access to sites that are deemed less significant. It also helps for faster adding and transferring of files and what makes it more favorable to the users is that in case the server goes down, it will directly transfer to the next server, thus users may not even notice that such a case has happened and the market will not be affected greatly.

9. Trusted Middleman

Proxy, like the good middleman that it is, also prevents you from accessing websites that may bring malware and possibly encrypting your data beyond your knowledge. Of course, you may not completely depend on it. You must use any one of the Top Antivirus products like AVG Internet Security (Special Discounted link).

It will also help you in preventing hackers from getting to your side for Proxy will serve as your barrier, and although it’s not that strong, it still has a way of preventing such unfortunate events from happening.

10. Use of GeoLocation

geo location change using proxy

The Proxy also utilizes GeoLocation that helps any visitor to visit the website’s pages directly by identifying the location of the visitor. This technique has helped the visitors have a better internet experience for they can easily find the topic they are looking for. The Proxy Server will serve as your way of accessing websites that are not accessible to your country of origin.

11. Usage of HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS

The proxy uses HTTP/HTTPS/ and SOCKS as a security lock for your website. This will not only make your website look good and earn higher page rank and website authority, it will also help you in gaining prospective clients’ trust every time they visit your website. Also, if you’re utilizing SEO for your website, having a site lock is highly recommended for it greatly helps to have your website show on the first page of Search Engines.

12. Strong VPN Proxy Service

VPN Proxy has the ability to provide a more secured connection, security, and anonymity to its clients. It prevents any hacking to happen even if you’re connected to public Wi-Fi, acts as a firewall to any kind of device (e.g. laptop, tablet, mobile phones). Aside from that it has no speed limits and can be automatically set up to the device you’re currently using.

13. Increases Productivity in a Company

Most commonly used in institutions and organizations, Proxy also helps in taking control of what employees can access on their desktop while inside the company’s premises. Thus, a company using Proxy may ban all employees from accessing social media sites or any other websites deemed insignificant to their daily tasks and will only consume their time. This will also help the company to track the common websites and content that their employees are accessing.

14. TOR VS. Proxy

Similar to Proxy, TOR better known as The Onion Router enables people to surf online while maintaining their anonymity. But it may actually slow down your browsing experience and bring delay of data. There have also been issues surfacing this software since it is commonly used by criminals and journalists, thus the government is keeping an eye on users of TOR.

15. Free Proxy for Everyone

Although we can’t deny that Premium Proxy like TorGuard Proxy has the features that offer security we’ve been looking for, Free Proxy like Hideme free Proxy has also offered that you can start within case you’re still hesitant to acquire the service. For starters, Free Proxy has the ability to hide your identity, your IP Address and you may access your desired websites.

Proxy Vs VPN: 4 Key Differences and Which Is The Best For You

Proxy VS VPN

Proxy servers and VPNs are tools that are useful for online anonymity and security.

Proxy servers and VPNs might seem similar on the surface, especially to those who are not very tech-savvy. They both route internet traffic to a separate computer/server before going to the intended destination. However, the devil is in the details. That’s right, proxy and VPN difference is in the details!

VPNs and Proxies both have their place. Proxies are ideal for simple internet browsing, in cases where speed is everything and security is not the primary concern – you basically want to get past geographical-restricted content by masking your IP address. On the other hand, a VPN is ideal where there are serious security concerns. They ensure that your information and the IP address don’t leak out. A VPN will keep hackers and government monitors at bay.

There are many differences between a VPN and a Proxy. Here are our top FOUR.

1. Proxy Vs. VPN Performance: Processing time and Network Speed

A proxy adds significantly little processing time or latency. Due to this, most of your original network speed is retained. A VPN, on the other hand, will at times add latency and in turn, decrease the download speed due to the encryption and decryption process. In fact, the stronger the obfuscation and encryption, the slower the network speed.

2. Configuration

Proxies require configuration. If this is not the case, you will need to use different and separate proxy types for uses such as torrenting, browsing, gaming (online), etc. These will require management on a per-application basis. VPNs once installed in a system will take care of any outbound internet traffic. It won’t really matter the program from where the traffic originates.

3. Security

VPNs encrypt your internet traffic and data. The tool will protect you fully from any information leaks between your destination servers and your computer. In contrast, proxies don’t encrypt data and traffic and thus don’t offer such protection.

4. Cost

Proxy Vs VPN: price

Proxies are cheaper as compared to VPNs. Proxies, in most cases, are free or very cheap. This is due to processing power and the fact that their load on servers is minimal. Most VPNs, on the other hand, are paid subscription services. Free VPNs options, in most cases, will have bandwidth limitations.

Which is best VPN or proxy?

That depends on your requirement. If you need the best security, VPN is the best for you. When you need the speed, a Proxy is the best for you.

Both proxies and VPNs will allow you to have some degree of privacy by allowing you to access the internet anonymously. However, how they do it is a bit different…that’s Where proxy and VPN difference comes in! Proxies work best for misdirection and IP masking while VPNs offer military-grade encryption of data and traffic.

9 Best Private Proxies

Video Tutorial

We Provided this article in the form of a Video Tutorial for our reader’s convenience. If you are interested in reading, skip the video for now and watch it after the completion of reading this article.

1. Blazing Proxies

Blazing SEO Proxy

Blazing Proxies is an advanced proxy solution that suits every kind of user to access any type of data. This is one of the products from Blazing SEO. With this, you can easily access restricted data across the world without any limitations. This is well known for Web Scraping as they are made by scrapers and by scrapers. Blazing SEO’s proxy is the only simple and better solution for collecting data. Blazing SEO never compromises in building the best proxy compared to other solutions.

Blazing SEO Proxy is totally a real-time and risk-free solution to make you different. This provides unlimited and unmetered bandwidth in the Datacenter and ISP proxies.

Types of Proxies

  • Residential Proxies
  • Data Center Proxies
  • ISP Proxies
  • Dedicated Proxies
  • Rotating Proxies
  • Semi-Dedicated Proxies
  • Mobile Proxies
  • Proxy Pilot
  • Scrapping Robot

Highlights

  • No Downtime
  • End-to-End Hardware Control
  • High Availability
  • Fewer Bans
  • Customizable Solutions
  • Optimized for Web Scraping
  • Ideal For Enterprise

Pricing & Discount Coupon

Blazing SEO Proxies are sorted into four different plans, such as Starter, Personal, Corporate, and Enterprise. All these plans are available on a 1Month, 3Months, 6Months, and 12Months Subscription basis. Moreover, these can be chosen according to the selected location.

Offer: Our readers get a special 5% discount on Blazing SEO Proxies. Visit our Blazing SEO Proxies discount coupon page for the promo code.

2. Instant Proxies

Instant Proxies Homepage

Instant Proxies is the most advanced private proxies with utmost speed. It has 99% uptime enabling it to monitor the network all the time. Testing the proxies before purchasing is one of the best things of Instant Proxies to be noticed. You can also choose the number of proxies ranging from 10 to 500+ at the time of purchase. For the best service of proxies, they provide an option to choose the purpose to which you are willing to use the proxies. They have proxy locations all over the world ensuring in providing uninterrupted and amazing fast services.

Highlights

  • Advanced Control Panel
  • 100% Compatibility
  • Elite Anonymity
  • Unlimited Bandwidth
  • World wide locations
  • Guaranteed Quality

Pricing

Instant Proxies Pricing

3. Squid Proxies

Squidproxies is the best private proxy and perfectly suits the people looking to use SEO tools, torrents, and streaming. Squid is a caching and forwarding HTTP web proxy. However, the best ones do not come cheap and they might be expensive. With a three-day refund policy, this proxy will work for the intended and legal use. Also, it has a wide variety of uses like caching repeated requests, caching web, DNS, etc.

squid

As soon as after installing a Squid proxy server, web browsers can be configured to use it as a proxy HTTP server which allows Squid to retain copies of the documents returned On repeated requests for the same documents, can reduce access time as well as bandwidth consumption. It is one of its unique features that increase speed, and LANs that share an Internet connection. As the cache servers are controlled by the web server operator, caching proxies do not anonymize the user and should not be confused with anonymizing proxies.

Squid is provided as free, open-source software, and can be used under the GNU General Public License (GPL) of the Free Software Foundation. It was originally designed to run on Unix-based systems but can also be run on Windows machines.

Highlights

  • Super Fast Servers
  • No Advertisements
  • Affordable Prices
  • Unlimited Bandwidth
  • 24/7 Customer Support

Pricing

Squid Proxies Pricing

Our readers get a special discount on Squidproxies through this discounted page.

4. Ace Proxies

Ace Proxies

Aceproxies, if you are looking for the perfect proxy or socks5 solution for high anonymity, private proxy, or proxies that will allow you to surf online then we are the solution. This is the best one. It offers 3 types of elite proxies, dedicated or private proxy or socks5 plans. Using a high anonymity private proxy you will have the ability to change your default IP address from your ISP, you can select the proxy format from proxy to socks5 depending on your business needs you can use our elite proxies for different online activities, like employment monitoring.

You can track and monitor your employee’s online activities, or for online applications development, online games, classified ads, online social activities, and many more activities that will increase your online experience or your income.

Highlights

  • 99.8% Uptime
  • High Anonymity
  • Compatible with all Browsers & Devices
  • Unlimited/Unmetered Bandwidth
  • Professional support
  • HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS Supported

Pricing

The plans and prices of Aceproxies are provided in the below screenshot.

Aceproxies pricing

Our readers get a special discount on Aceproxies through this discounted link.

5. Proxydrop

Proxydrop

Proxydrop is one of the finest proxy network companies established in the year 2020. It provides residential, ISP, and CAPTCHA proxies mainly to buy the rare shoe releases. This works based on Discord and Twitter-based. Proxydrop is specially optimized for sneaker stores. This makes you get rid of purchasing IPs for higher prices and this is the first sneaker proxy.

Proxydrop provides 3 kinds of proxy services. Such as one-click CAPTCHA, ISP proxy, and rotating residential proxies.

DataCenter(CAPTCHA) Proxies

These Datacenter IP addresses are made for forgetting one-click CAPTCHA while accessing the site. These are mainly associated with Google and YouTube.

ISP Proxies

ISP Proxies of Proxydrop are the residential IPs. These are located only in Virginia and are dedicated to one user only at a time. Proxydrop stated as you can achieve the fastest speed of 50ms using their ISP Proxies.

Residential Proxies

The main product of Proxydrop is peer-to-peer Residential Proxies. It allows you to access over 28M IPs covering all the major locations like the US, UK, Japan, and more. The Residential Proxies is further available in 3 plans. Such as Regular Residential Proxies, Elite Residential Proxies, Prestige Residential Proxies.

Pricing

Proxydrop is available in different versions and the prices of all the versions are provided in the below screenshot.

ACE – Residential

  • 2GB – $36.00
  • 5GB – $80.00
  • 10GB – $140.00

Elite – Residential

  • 2GB – $40.00
  • 5GB – $90.00
  • 10GB – $160.00

Prestige – Residential

  • 2GB – $44.00
  • 5GB – $100.00
  • 10GB – $180.00

Virginia ISP

  • 25 ISP – $62.50
  • 50 ISP – $115.00
  • 100 ISP – $200.00

DC Captcha

  • 10 ISP – $11.00
  • 25 ISP – $26.25
  • 50 ISP – $50.00

Offer: Our readers get a special 20% discount on all ProxyDrop plans. Visit our ProxyDrop coupon page for the promo code.

6. Proxyseller

Proxyseller

Proxyseller has very flexible plans. There are no fixed plans. You can buy the number of proxies required for you. They have different pricing for different country proxies. Their proxies are helpful for almost every type of task like browsing, online gaming, SEO promotion, Social networks, etc.,

  • They provide the speed up to 100 mb/s.
  • Your proxies will be selected from 150 subnets and over 70 different networks.
  • They provide 24X7 support.
  • 24 hours refund policy is available.
  • You can select either IPV4 or IPV6 servers.

Our readers get a special 15% discount coupon through This Proxyseller discount Coupon Page.

7. Storm Proxies

storm proxies

Storm Proxies is also one of the best private proxies and its unique technology developed in-house to make proxies 100% highly anonymous. Your real IP will always stay hidden. It offers High Speed & Performance i.e; Storm Proxies’ 1GB network is optimized for high performance and fast multi-threaded tools. You can get instant access after payment – no waiting for account activation or proxies setup with unlimited bandwidth.

It has the following features;

  • With every HTTP request, you will get new random IP from a proxy pool of 70,000 proxy IPs.
  • These proxies change IP every 3 minutes. Use them for account creation, social sites or regular browsing.
  • High Speed & Performance
  • Automatic and Instant Delivery
  • Unlimited Bandwidth
  • 24/7 Premium Support
  • Highly Anonymous

8. Proxy Key

ProxyKey

Proxykey is one of the global leaders in private proxies which offer a secure and reliable proxy solution. Its price is higher compared to others. However, they provide a reliable service for those who are looking to use their anonymous proxies for SEO. These can also be used for Marketing Intelligence, SEO, social media, affiliate marketing, data mining, litigation, web development, and internet security. In other words, they can be used for Google Proxies, Amazon Proxies, LinkedIn Proxies, SnapChat Proxies, YouTube Proxies, Ticketing Proxies, Pinterest Proxies, Instagram Proxies, eBay Proxies, Tumblr Proxies, Facebook Proxies, Twitter Proxies, PayPal Proxies, and Craigslist Proxies.

Its major drawback is it requires one business day to set up your proxies compared to others who give you instant access after payment. It is a premium service, so their proxies have a higher chance of working for your intended purposes.

Highlights

  • 99.92% Uptime
  • Friendly Support
  • 1GBPS Speeds
  • Absolute Anonymity

Our readers get special discounts on ProxyKey. Please check Our ProxyKey discount coupon page for the coupons.

9. My Private Proxy

mpp

MyPrivateProxy offers the best private proxies for SEO and anonymity. All these private proxies support HTTP/HTTPS protocols and authentication by IP or username and password. Its popular products include Sneakers Proxies, Craigslist Proxies, Twitter Proxies, LinkedIn Proxies, Facebook Proxies, Pokemon Go Proxies, and Ticketing Proxies.

It is a fast and reliable service that is comparable relatively speaking to other proxy providers. The best way to save money would be to purchase My Private Proxy bulk IP packages. However, they do offer smaller packages if you need only a few IPs for your purpose. If you’re looking for Ticketing proxies or Sneaker Proxies it is the best one.

There are a lot of benefits to Proxy sites. Therefore, you need to compare more than one provider and then pick the best provider who got top reviews from customers.

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Proxy Server: The Complete Guide – FAQs

Are Proxies Illegal?

Yes, it is legal to use a proxy server.

Do hackers use Proxy servers?

While hackers may have access to your proxy, they’ll have trouble reaching the server actually running the web software where your data is stored.

Why do hackers use proxies?

An attacker may use proxy hacking to gain an advantage over a competitor or, ultimately, to redirect users requesting the targeted page to a malicious or fraudulent website.

Can the FBI track your IP address?

The authorities can only track an IP address to a VPN company, which they’d then have to force to reveal the real IP address from logs, which might not even exist.

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