Is using a proxy server legal?
Yes, it is legal to use a proxy server. Proxies have many different uses, including enabling remote work; setting up a support system for users who are located outside a particular network; protecting networks and Internet users from malicious content; streaming online content from outside a country and more.
When are Proxy Servers Illegal?
Keep in mind that there are some circumstances in which using a proxy server is illegal. For example, some websites stream content that is only available to audiences who have paid their license fees to access it. If you did not pay license fees and tried to access that content via a proxy server, that act would be considered illegal.
Why Use a Proxy Server?
Let’s say you are living in the United Kingdom, and trying to log onto a U. S. based website to watch educational documentaries or your favorite TV programme. However, you discovered that IP addresses in the UK have been blocked. Don’t feel down just yet because proxies allow you to circumvent web filters that are blocking you from your geographical location.
There is content out there that may have been produced for individuals to view for free, so why shouldn’t you be able to view or access it? As long as using proxies do not appear to be an infringement of copyright law, you can use proxies to stream content while enjoying complete peace of mind.
Good Practices for Using Proxies Legally
Before you use a proxy server to stream any content that has been blocked in your geographical location, you should carefully read the target website’s terms and conditions. This practice ensures you avoid breaking any terms and conditions that may lead the target website to take legal action against you.
At Proxy Key, we offer stellar proxies that grant you instant access to your favorite content online with just a few clicks. Contact us today for more information.
What’s The Difference Between a Proxy and a VPN? – Varonis
The Internet can be a scary place: we’re under near constant attack from ransomware and botnets – on work computers, personal devices, even smart home devices like thermostats and baby monitors.
If you’re security conscious, you might be thinking about setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or a proxy server.
Discover the Top 5 Remote Security Threats to your workforce with our Free Whitepaper
“It’s a new world of remote work and this was a jumpstart on securing it. ”
Proxy and VPN Defined
Both VPNs and proxies enable a higher degree of privacy than you might otherwise have, allowing you to access the internet anonymously by hiding your IP in various ways. But how they do that is quite different.
A proxy acts as a gateway – it’s ideal for basic functions like anonymous web browsing and managing (or circumventing) content restrictions. Proxy servers excel at IP masking and misdirection, making them good for viewing geographically limited content. They allow users to bypass content restrictions and monitoring, or enforce website content restrictions – so that you can’t log into certain web pages on company time.
A VPN client on your computer establishes a secure tunnel with the VPN server, replacing your local ISP routing. VPN connections encrypt and secure all of your network traffic, not just the HTTP or SOCKS calls from your browser like a proxy server.
VPNs are great when you need to use the WIFI at a local coffee shop: using a VPN instead of the potentially completely unencrypted local WIFI adds another layer of privacy – who knows who is lurking on that network, just sitting in the corner sipping coffee and waiting to steal your credit card digits?
Proxy and VPN Drawbacks
If you’re using proxy servers to mask your internet activity, you might see performance issues that prevent you from streaming or downloading the thing you are trying to get. High ping times and other traffic on the proxy server can cause web pages to load slowly. For this reason, some users pay for a private proxy server which limits the number of users that access it, speeding up your connections.
Proxies are also vulnerable to security exploits: they can be open to attack, allowing the bad guys to infiltrate networks or steal private data. Some proxies can still track (and store) your browsing habits, as well as recording usernames and passwords – rendering that promise of anonymity null.
VPNs can also suffer from performance issues, depending on proximity to the VPN server you’re connecting with. VPNs use a local client to create the connection to the VPN server, so any local CPU or memory issues will slow down the connections. VPNs are typically more expensive to use (and maintain) than a proxy server, and they are often more complex to manage.
Just like proxy servers, VPNs can’t guarantee anonymity while browsing. Neither of these services will always encrypt your traffic all the way to the web server. A VPN only guarantees an end-to-end encrypted connection if you use the HTTPS protocol when you go to a new web address. Your data will be encrypted to the VPN, but from that point on, it could be unencrypted to the web server. For some sites, this may be irrelevant: an information-only webpage with no login or payment options for example, but for any sites that require a login or online payments – or any sensitive data – make sure the website is enabled to use HTTPS. Remember, the S stands for moderately more secure.
Proxy and VPN Benefits
The biggest argument to use a VPN instead of a proxy is the total encryption for all traffic you get with the VPN. Dollar for dollar, a VPN is more secure than a similarly priced proxy. VPN providers maintain their own networks and you use their IP addresses for your connections. The top VPN providers advertise a logless policy, which means they don’t have data to provide to anyone about your browsing habits.
If you’re an IT business owner charged with the security of data and users, there are advantages to both, and you likely have both configured for your company. For users in the network, you might route traffic through a proxy server to log web traffic, protect the organization from malware or other attacks, and enforce a web content policy.
When users are operating out of the office, you will want to use a VPN to create a secure connection to access the company resources (email, internal shares, etc. ).
Proxy vs VPN: Which is Right for me?
Privacy and security matter these days, regardless of if it’s your company data or your own personal data you need to protect. Make sure you’re investing time and money into the correct tools for your security goals: both proxies and VPNs add an additional layer of security and privacy to your data.
If you want to enable your team to work remotely with secure access to the company resources, set up and maintain a VPN users to access the network with the VPN.
If your concerns are more around “what websites are my users hitting, ” a proxy server is a better tool.
To get the most bang for the buck (and to protect your data as a security-aware citizen), sign up for a well-regarded VPN service. For the most part, VPN services allow you to use servers in different locations to work around content restrictions. If you need to use a free proxy server occasionally for that purpose as well, just be aware of the risks.
If you’re just starting to implement your data security strategy on an enterprise level, there are more complex attack vectors to account for. Insider threats, APTs, privileged account escalations – along with plain old social engineering – are just as dangerous to your data as an unencrypted data stream.
Neither a proxy nor a VPN will protect you from 100% of the cybersecurity threats your company will encounter: they won’t stop an insider from stealing personal data, a ransomware attack, or a coordinated infiltration effort.
Varonis Edge adds perimeter telemetry to security analytics – monitoring proxy, VPN, and DNS to help bridge that gap: you’ll be able to see when an attacker breaks through a VPN, get alerts when sensitive data is uploaded to external websites, more. See how it works with a 1:1 demo – and discover how Varonis helps secure your data from perimeter attacks.
Proxy Services Are Not Safe. Try These Alternatives | WIRED
Millions of people across the world use free proxy services to bypass censorship filters, improve online security, and access websites that aren’t available in their country. But an analysis has found those free services come at an unexpected cost for users: their privacy and security. Christian Haschek, an Austria-based security researcher, wrote a script that analyzed 443 open proxies, which route web traffic through an alternate, often pseudo-anonymous, computer network. The script tested the proxies to see if they modified site content or allowed users to browse sites while using encryption. According to Haschek’s research, just 21 percent of the tested proxies weren’t “shady. “Haschek found that the other 79 percent of surveyed proxy services forbid secure, HTTPS is commonly used to encrypt Web traffic, allowing users to enter credit cards, passwords, and other sensitive information in a manner that makes it difficult for hackers and intermediaries to intercept. By preventing customers from using the Web securely, Haschek warns these open proxies “can analyze your traffic and steal your logins. “Free proxies are also manipulating websites directly. Haschek reports that 16. 6 percent of proxies change HTML and 8. 5 percent modified websites’ JavaScript. In most cases, this was done merely to inject advertising into websites. However, Haschek speculates that these services are “probably also cookie stealing. “Popularity SurgeProxy usage has been growing over the years along with the rise of content streaming services and growing fears of government surveillance of internet activity. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which encrypts all your traffic and routes it through another server to mask your location, are commonly used by people looking to bypass geolocation restrictions on services such as Netflix, Hulu, and BBC iPlayer. And by masking user’s locations, software and media pirates have also flocked to VPNs to make it more difficult for content owners to sue them in services are also popular in countries with strict Internet laws. They have been used in China, particularly by foreigners looking to access Western websites blocked by the Great Firewall, until the Chinese government moved to block VPN access earlier this year. In April, many Australians started using VPNs after the government passed a mandatory data retention law. As a result, CNET reported that one VPN provider’s Australian business increased 500 percent between early March and the same time, in the past few months free VPN services have been tied to deceptive business practices. Hola, an Israeli VPN service that boasts over 48 million users, was widely criticized last month for selling its free-tier users’ idle bandwidth. This meant Hola’s millions of free users were unknowingly turned into a botnet that was utilized for criminal activities, including repeated denial-of-service attacks against the message board 8chan. Haschek’s analysis didn’t uncover anything quite so sinister, but noted some of the reviewed services were “definitely bad adware. ” A previous report from the security researcher noted that many of these free proxies exist because establishing the service serves as “an easy way to infect thousands of users and collect their data. “According to that report, Haschek observed that controlling a VPN services makes it is easy to manipulate websites to steal login information, banking and credit card accounts, turn users into a distributed denial-of-service attack botnet, and monitor all their Web nding Safe AlternativesTo help combat the security vulnerabilities users expose themselves to when using free proxies, Haschek released a tool called Proxy Checker, which performs a cursory evaluation on any proxy service in use to ensure it isn’t manipulating content or forcing users to forgo Haschek recommends avoiding free proxies altogether. Fortunately, secure alternatives a paid VPN or proxy service is a good place to start. Because these paid services rely on monthly subscription revenue to support their operation, they don’t have to resort to breaking encryption to serve ads or selling there users’ traffic off, as was the case with Hola. For Jonathan Roudier, president of the widely recommended VPN service Private Internet Access, privacy is the focus. “We wanted to offer the best privacy and security available, ” Roudier told WIRED. “That comes at a cost. “Roudier noted that paid VPN services have other benefits over free offerings that go beyond security, including providing customer support, not placing bandwidth restrictions on users, and allowing users to choose which encryption method to ever, not all paid VPNs services equally prioritize their users’ security. When shopping for a VPN service, it is recommended to find a service that does not log its customers’ traffic and prevents an anonymity-unmasking issue known as IPv6 leakage. Both Private Internet Access and another popular service, Mullvad, carry that level of security. Another provider, TorGuard, does not log user activity and allows users to prevent IPv6 leakage through an advanced setting in its VPN can also use Tor, which is both free and regarded as one of the most secure anonymous browsing services available. However, Tor relies on volunteer-run servers to relay traffic and bounces that traffic across the globe, which means you can kiss smoothly streaming of HD video goodbye. Ultimately, there is no silver bullet to ensure complete security and privacy online. But when entrusting your Internet traffic to third party, its best to use a service that isn’t basing its business on serving ads—and weakening your security.
Frequently Asked Questions about are proxies legal
Can proxies be traced?
Proxies are also vulnerable to security exploits: they can be open to attack, allowing the bad guys to infiltrate networks or steal private data. Some proxies can still track (and store) your browsing habits, as well as recording usernames and passwords – rendering that promise of anonymity null.Sep 28, 2020
Are proxies safe?
Millions of people across the world use free proxy services to bypass censorship filters, improve online security, and access websites that aren’t available in their country. … But an analysis has found those free services come at an unexpected cost for users: their privacy and security.Jul 6, 2015
Why are proxies banned?
Websites often ban proxies when they notice that there are many IP addresses on a single subnet. They shut the proxies down without warning, so you might be up and running one minute and then shut down the next. Avoid this problem by purchasing your proxy from a reputable proxy provider.