What is a Proxy?

About a month ago, I decided to start a proxy. Well even though some of you don’t know what a proxy is, I have to do this introduction. Well I started a proxy, I am well familiar with these proxies, but I thought lets try to see whether they still work. Yup now my site Ekey Web Proxy is making about $1 a day and I don’t do anything. Not bad eh. So I thought about writing a series of posts in which I will first explain what a proxy is, then I will show you guys how to make one, than one will show how to advertise and monetize a proxy.

Well a Proxy is a server which reaches out to another server (website/file/etc) and download it to itself and than show it to its user. Confusing eh. Well The image below will describe how exactly the proxy server works.

You can see How the server reaches for the files in step 1, than download it in step 2, and than it displays the files to the user in step 3. Now why the hell people go through all this when they can just go the site directly?

Well sometimes they can’t. Take schools, (Not Universities) but the high school I went to wouldn’t let you go to games websites, myspace, facebook, or any other site like that. Than people would use web proxies because proxies run the site from its server rather than the original server and most times the administrators ban the ip of the original sites, so the proxy work. Sometimes they are even used for logging into forums, or other sites where you want to be anonymous. There are anonymous web proxies that will hide your IP, so you won’t be traced. Proxies are also used at the work places and for the same reason because corporate often block game sites, or other type of sites.

While proxies sound all good, there are disadvantages to these also. Proxies load slower than the site would load. Duh, you can see all the process in the image. Another risk is your information being shared. Well since you are using the proxies to login to your profiles, your password must go through the proxy server. Sometimes encrypted, and the other times unencrypted. The unencrypted passwords, or information can be used against you. I know I don’t do stuff like that, but people can possibly use those also, so please please please do not login to your bank account, or enter your credit card numbers using a proxy.

Why Do I use a Proxy? Well as a webmaster, proxies are often helpful to see whether the DNS is updated. Sometimes your Internet Service Provider (ISP) doesn’t update the dns immideiately, so you can see that through a proxy. Also sometimes, your own server acts weird and block the IP. Say you went to some other place and couldn’t remember your password, and got locked out of the system. You can use the proxy to fix that. (Thats why I keep a personal proxy)

In my next post I will go over about how to create a proxy. Stay updated, if you are not you will miss it. Subscribe and You won’t miss it! Guaranteed..