As you probably know by now, proxy servers act as a go between to keep your personal or company network from being infected by viruses or malware. They obscure the point of origin and keep your web surfing anonymous. They allow employees to bypass company firewalls to access websites that the company servers have restricted or limited access to. So what would Joe Ordinary Citizen do with a private proxy of his own?
There are many legal uses of proxy servers, let’s look at them.
Some web content is restricted solely for licensing reasons alone. Specifically, sites that show movies or television shows must have a license that allows them to play content in each country they want to show content in. For example, the US based Hulu.com does not have the license to play US television shows or movies in other countries. So if you are in the UK or Canada, the IP address of your personal computer will declare loudly and proudly the location you are accessing the site from. The servers at Hulu will deny service to anyone that is from a country that they are not licensed in.
However if you buy private proxy services based in the US, you can connect to the proxy, which then connects to your computer and Hulu ‘thinks’ you are in the US. For those in the US who want to view BBC television, connecting to a UK proxy will bypass the BBC restrictions.
Law enforcement also uses proxy servers in their attempts to strike back at organized computer criminals. Their investigations take place from an IP address that would reveal the user’s state, city, and potentially the physical address of the building they are in. With a proxy server based elsewhere, the investigator’s identities are concealed and their efforts at investigation are kept hidden from those that would take undue advantage of that knowledge.
In oppressive countries like Iran, where access to Western news is restricted via a massive block on Google, Gmail and Youtube websites, proxy services bypass the harsh censorship restrictions in place. This allows a group of people access to information that their government doesn’t want them to have access to. While the legality of this in those oppressive countries can be questioned, the legality of an oppressive regime is not a foremost concern in most people’s minds.
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