Questions & Answers:

• What is a proxy server?
• Why I need to use proxy servers?
• How to setup my browser to use proxy?
• What is an anonymous proxy server?
• What is a free proxy server?
• Where I can get the list of tested and functional proxies?
• Is the "anonymous proxy" I came across on the Internet really an anonymous one?
• What is HTTP or SOCKS proxy server?
• Anonymity of HTTP and SOCKS Proxy?

• What is a Proxy Server?
  A proxy server is a kind of buffer between your computer and the Internet resources you are accessing (Web sites, FTP archives etc.). The data you request come to the proxy first, and only then it transmits the data to you.
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• Why I need to use proxy servers?
  - Transfer speed improvement. If the file you requested was received before to your proxy server, then proxy server will interrupt this file request and you will receive the file directly from proxy. However need to know, you can got the "speed down" effect. This effect appears when your proxy has long answer time because there is slow connection between you and your proxy server.
  - Security and privacy. Anonymous proxies destroys information about your computer in the requests header. So you can safely surf the net and your information will never be used by hackers and spammers.
  - Sometimes you encounter some problems while accessing to web server (for example, web-chat). You have mistaken while working with some data and / or the server administrator restricted access from your IP. So you can use the anonymous proxy and try to access again.
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• What is an anonymous proxy server?
  Any web site in the world can track your movements through its pages and monitor your reading interests using your IP address, a unique ID assigned to each computer on the Internet. Depending on the policies of the Internet resource, you might not be able to get access to the information you need. Also, your visit can be registered and used later to gather some personal information about you.
  It is widely agreed that governments and organizations publish dummy websites on controversial topics for the purpose of monitoring interested parties. Also, this information, in combination with your e-mail address, can be used to increase the number of targeted advertisements fired at you by the marketers.
  Using only your IP address and the information about your operating system, a Web site can automatically exploit security holes in your system using some not-very-complex, ready-made, free hacking programs. Some of such programs may just hang your machine, making you reboot it, but other, more powerful ones, can get access to the content of your hard drive or RAM. The anonymous proxy prevents this by hiding your IP address so that no one can access your computer via the network. In most cases, however, proxies do inform the target server about the address of the computer that made the request, transmitting your IP-address in different forms.
  Anonymous (real anonymous!) proxy servers don't transfer the information about the IP-address of the client, and thus effectively hide the information about you and your surfing interests. Besides that, some proxy servers can also hide the very fact that you are surfing through a proxy server! Anonymous proxies can be used for all kinds of Web-services.
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• Public proxy server - what is it?
  It is a proxy server which is free and open for everybody on the Internet. There is quite a large number of public proxy servers in many countries but most of them are not anonymous.
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• Where I can get the list of tested and functional proxies?
  This site has tested and functional proxies! You can buy HTTP/HTTPS/SSL elite proxies & SOCKS 4/5 here !
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• What is HTTP or SOCKS proxy server?
  HTTP proxy server is a proxy, allowing working on the Internet with HTTP and (not always) FTP protocols. It (as well as other proxy servers) can carry out caching of information downloaded from the Internet.
  SOCKS proxy allows to work with any (version SOCKS 4 - with TCP, SOCKS 5 - with TCP and UDP) protocols. A socks proxy simply transfers data from a client to a server, not penetrating into this data contents (therefore it can work with HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, NNTP, etc.)
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• Anonymity of HTTP and SOCKS Proxy?
  As SOCKS transfers all data from a client to a server, nothing adding from itself, from the point of view of a web-server, a socks proxy is a client. Therefore anonymity of this type of proxy servers is really always absolute.
  
  HTTP proxy servers have several anonymity levels. It depends on purposes, which a proxy is used for, so an anonymity requirement is not always an essential one.
  Conditionally HTTP proxy servers by their anonymity degree could be divided onto:
  Transparent - these proxies are not anonymous. They, first, let a web server know that there is used a proxy server and, secondly, "give away" an IP-address of a client. The task of such proxies, as a rule, is information caching and/or support of Internet access for several computers via single connection.
  Anonymous - these proxy servers let a remote computer (web-server) know, that there is used a proxy, however, they do not pass an IP-address of a client.
  Distorting - unlike the previous type, they transfer an IP-address to a remote web-server, however, this address is a phantom: randomly generated by a proxy server or any fixed (not your) IP. So, these proxies distort your IP address from the point of view of a web-server.
  High anonymous (elite) - they do not send your IP-address to a remote computer. Also, they do not inform that there is used any proxy server! So, a web-server "thinks" that it works directly with a client.
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