what's a proxy?

[cameroth]

Sorry if this is a dumb question. I'm just curious, but what is a proxy server, and how does it work? Also, what is it usefull for? Thanks for the help.

[BearEater]

a public proxy is for wolves that wants to look like sheeps..lol if you use good public proxy,to web sites,it appears you have proxy server's IP,which is totally different from yours. Why would they use it? let's say a bad guy wants to do something to a web site, s/he needs to cover his tracks. If the owner checks the raw logs,s/he would see the hacker's IP and could trace the person. So,the bad guy uses proxy.

there ARE other reasons for using proxies. for some enterprises,internal proxies act as secure log-in thing,which I dont really know..lol
Yahoo was once hacked because it proxies servers,which allowed the people that logged in to perform changes, were open...internal and external.

ah,crap,now moderators would know my IP and trace me down!!!

lol

[cameroth]

thanks for the information. sounds interesting.

[tekchik]

To go into more detail about proxy in the enterprise, it can be used by a business interest to set-up trusted sites and to also block access to other sites that may be inappropriate. You can even get so particular as to tell the proxy what IP addresses are allowed to communicate with what other IP addresses, so you can get really granular control.

There are all sorts of configurations that you can apply to your proxy server and it will act as the Internet police of your organization. I am sure this can be very helpful in the case of adware/spyware as the proxy server acts as your front in surfing the net.

[sleepypost]

there are some proxy sites that allow you to simply type in an address and you will be hidden. they often require you to pay though. I believe that they are good things because our privacy should be protected on the web too.

[pointd]

Proxies can also cache web pages to limit bandwidth usage and quite often run NAT so that many computers can attach to the internet using a single IP address.

To take TekChik's point a bit further our work proxy, which is a Novell 6 server using Novell BorderManager, also has the ability to limit a specific user or groups access to a specific URL and/or port whilst at the same time providing firewall and varying levels of content control.