In the ever-growing concern about identity theft and hacking of data, there has never been a bigger need than now for using a proxy. You may be asking yourself what a proxy is and how it helps protect you and your information. Proxies hide your IP address and personal information when you are on the internet. There are two kinds: private proxy and a shared proxy.
On a private proxy, you incur all the expense of using the server on your own, but with a shared proxy you split the cost with other people while still protecting yourself.
How Do Proxies Work
Let’s say you’re an executive in a very competitive business and you are working out of your hotel room today in Hong Kong where you have flown to try to get a contract worth two million dollars from a firm there. Many other companies are also trying to capture the same contract. You need delicate information from your home office in the states to help negotiate the deal.
If you request information from your office, it has to travel across the network and back. A proxy will take that information and encrypt it making it hard for anyone wanting the information to read it.
It will also send it out to another server and reroute it to your office making it impossible for anyone trying to watch for your data to know for sure where you are of where you want to get information from.
The information you send is called packets, and when an intruder tries to follow your information with a proxy on it, all they can see is static. Making sure the information is unreadable protects your information from potential hackers.
Proxies also help cover your trail of where you have been on the web. That means that other people can’t piece together information based on where you have been to on the internet and steal bits and pieces of your identity. You also can use proxies from your home to protect your identity. It works the same way. Having a static IP address makes it is easier to find you and steal your information. A proxy hides your activity.
Your Online Profile
Have you ever wondered why you could look online at Walmart for a particular toy for your son’s birthday and then every time you log on an ad for that toy comes up trying to sell it to you? Without a proxy, everywhere you surf the web at leaves an electronic footprint. Cookies are always tracking our every move on the internet. They then take all the information they have gathered and have made an online profile of our surfing under our IP address. Then every time we log on the ads start.
If you use a proxy, the only address they have are the ones the server gives them which change frequently and protect your real IP address. The proxy hides your true identity giving you privacy on the web.
A Shared Proxy
A shared proxy does the same thing as a private proxy but does it at a fraction of the cost to the user because of the server being shared with other people. Companies like Microleaves have plans to fit a user’s needs and price range. Using their shared proxies, you can add security to your personal or business internet usage.
What services or features can you expect from most companies selling share proxies?
While most of these features are available at most businesses offering proxies for sale some may not be at all of them, so be sure to ask which services they provide to meet your needs or situation.
- Lightning Fast Speeds: While a few companies out there might operate at a slightly slower speed because of the seconds to bounce back and forth off servers, this is not usually the case overall.
- Diverse IP Ranges: Shared Proxies usually will have your IP addresses showing up from different parts of the United States or even the world making it very hard to track your actual city of origin. By switching origins of where you are surfing from it adds more safety to prevent hackers from finding out your identity.
- Remain Fully Anonymous: Proxy companies work hard to keep their customer’s identity anonymous to help protect your information. By changing your proxies consistently, you can stay hard to track down and locate. Your proxy company will be the only one who knows your exact location.
- Unlimited Bandwidth: Most companies offer unlimited bandwidth. You aren’t penalized for using too much data in a month. You shouldn’t have your speeds downgraded from overuse either.
- Replace Dead Proxies Instantly: If a proxy stops working correctly, it will get replaced immediately by most companies. Occasionally, a proxy may need to be replaced if it becomes nonresponsive.
- Server Monitoring: Live real-time surveillance of the servers to prevent tampering by hackers.
- Support: They offer support to answer any questions you might have about using your proxies and the servers. They can help you with issues in getting your proxies set up. Set up in most cases is immediately available.
- Share with a Limited Amount of Users: Most companies try to keep a low number of people sharing the servers with you to prevent problems surfing. By keeping the numbers, small users should not have problems running out of IP Addresses.
- IP Addresses Changed Out Monthly: Some companies offer to automatically switch out your IP addresses monthly to make your surfing even safer. By changing out your IP addresses periodically, it helps further ensure that you remain hard to track.
- Supports both HTTP or HTTPS: Your proxies should support both HTTP and HTTPS providing you can search the internet just as you normally would if not using a proxy. While HTTPS offers a little more security than HTTP sites, you should still be able to surf sites that provide either of these two protocols.
With the common issues, we see every day in the news and other places it is imperative to be proactive in protecting our identity at all times and especially while on the internet. Once someone’s identity is stolen, it is almost impossible to get back to normal again and is very costly.
By using shared proxies, you can have the security of knowing you are doing everything possible to protect yourself and your family.
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