How do proxy sites work?

Answer 1

How do Proxies Work?
To understsand how proxies work, you must first understand what a proxy is.

Proxies are servers. You connect to a proxy and the proxy connects to the website you want to visit; it acts like an intermediary.

When you submit a website's URL into a proxy, what the proxy first does is retrieve the data of the foreign page. Then, depending on the settings you selected, it modifies the data accordingly. If you opt your proxy not to show images, it will strip all < img > html tags. If you don't want your proxy to show the main title, it will eliminate the < title > tag. This all happens before the data is sent to you; when a proxy is fast this happens in milliseconds.

So how is this useful? Well, since the proxy is the one to retrieve the data from the foreign website, your IP never appears in that site. Additionally, most proxies have Java Script security meassurements so you can be sure that you'll never catch a virus if you're using a proxy. Finally, some hackers use IPs obtained from logs in order to conduct a port scan and then hack someone's computer. By using a proxy, your IP will never appear in anyone computer and you can stop worrying about such hackers (some hackers have different methods).

Besides security, proxies also help greatly to preserve your privacy.

Some proxies have more options than others, read this article to find out more about how such options work.

Answer 2

A proxy server is a computer that offers a computer network service to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. A client connects to the proxy server, then requests a connection, file, or other resource available on a different server. The proxy provides the resource either by connecting to the specified server or by serving it from a cache. In some cases, the proxy may alter the client's request or the server's response for various purposes.

A common proxy application is a caching web proxy. This provides a nearby cache of web pages and files available on remote web servers, allowing local network clients to access documents from the cache, according to their age, size, and access history. Two simple cache algorithms are Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU). LRU removes the documents that have been left the longest, while LFU removes the least popular documents. The algorithms can also be combined.

Some censorware applications — which attempt to block offensive web content — are implemented as web proxies. Other web proxies reformat web pages for a specific purpose or audience; for example, Skweezer reformats web pages for cell phones and PDAs. Network operators can also deploy proxies to intercept computer viruses and other hostile content served from remote web pages.

A special case of web proxies are "CGI proxies." These are web sites which allow a user to access a site through them. They generally use PHP or CGI to implement the proxying functionality. CGI proxies are frequently used to gain access to web sites blocked by corporate or school proxies. Since they also hide the user's own IP address from the web sites they access through the proxy, they are sometimes also used to gain a degree of anonymity, called "Proxy Avoidance."

Answer 3

Proxy sites are used to get you around a firewall. Say the proxy site is named proxy.com. Your company/schools firewall is set to restrict traffic to myspace.com. But it may not be set to restrict traffic to proxy.com.

You go to proxy.com, and from there go to myspace.com. But proxy.com captures the information coming from myspace.com, and rebroadcast it as if it is coming from proxy.com. So the wirefall does not block it, and you get to myspace.com.

Keep in mind that when you are using a proxy site, every bit of information you transmit (like your ID and password) is read, recorded and kept by the proxy site. One dishonest emplyee at the site, and all yor personal information could easily be stolen, your accounts hacked into and stolen, your e-mail hacked, etc. Using a proxy site is an extreme security risk.

Answer 4

Pretty much they forward your requests on your behalf and then they return the results. Also they may scan for theats, they can filter out certain sites, they can log traffic and requests, etc.

Oh yeah, and they cache pages, so they will return a page for the second request faster.

Answer 5

MAGIC!