With the demonstrated need for being able to anonymous and secure internet access for individuals, businesses and law enforcement the question now turns to the choices between a cheap proxy service and a free proxy service. Remember that while a proxy will keep your computer safe from viruses and intrusions, and will provide you with anonymity it’s the proxy that has to decode all the information transferring between your computer and the network. This essentially means that the proxy can ‘see’ everything that you are sending and doing.
The key is can you trust the proxy? There are paid proxy services that specialize in ensuring the security and safety of your system so those may be trusted to a greater degree than the free anonymity networks. One brand of free proxy services is TOR which stands for “The Onion Router”. It is a free software created by and maintained by a volunteer network of more than 3,000 relays. The name implies a ‘layer-like’ encryption process.
Onion routing refers to the process whereby the original information, the destination and origination point are encrypted and re-encrypted many times. Each of the multitude of relays decrypts a small portion or ‘layer’ of data at a time. By the time the information reaches its final destination it has passed through so many layers that the sender is rendered completely anonymous. One final consideration with free proxy services is that even though the security is there between the originating computer and the destination computer, ‘someone’ at the proxy company knows your real IP address.
One cheap proxy service, (and by cheap, it’s around $10.00 a month) is Hide My Ass, abbreviated HMA. While the name may be a little crude, it is one of the easier softwares to use in that it doesn’t require the user to configure any proxy settings. HMA tracks the status of your connections and allows you to predetermine the preferences as to proxy country of origin. HMA has close to 40,000 IP addresses world-wide.
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