Proxies what are and how to use them

What is a server proxy:

A server proxy is a computer system that manage internet connection and handle the traffic between 2 or more points, from a client computer to another server, the proxy is  used to move the traffic between a connection, it offer security, performance and more privacy.

What are the most common cons of using a proxy :

• Privacy, If all users identify themselves as one, it is difficult for the accessed resource to differentiate them. But this can be bad, for example when identification must necessarily be made.
• Abuse, Being willing to receive requests from many users and respond to them, you may do some work that you do not touch. You therefore need to control who has access and who does not to your services, which is usually very difficult.
• Irregularity: The fact that the proxy represents more than one user gives problems in many scenarios, in particular those that presuppose direct communication between 1 sender and 1 receiver (such as TCP/IP).

How to setup a proxy configuration in a single system for all users:

You will need to setup a global environment variable that will affect to all users, for you have to edit the file etc/profile with root user and add the needed entries with the proxy information that you would like to use. If you would like to use a proxy for ftp and http connection, add the following entries:

export https_proxy=http://server-proxy:8080/

export ftp_proxy=http://210.113.232.28:8083/

Follow the next steps to setup a proxy trough the terminal in a linux system, if you have any scrap or craw program in your system, you will need it, you can use command http_proxy

export http_proxy=http://server-name:port//

maybe the proxy server requires authentication, if then, do this:

export http_proxy=http://user:password@server-name:port/

If you would like to use https for more security, use https_proxy like this:

export https_proxy=https://user:password@server-name:port/

To see your current configuration use the following commands:

echo $http_proxy
echo $https_proxy

If you need to delete the configuration, use the unset command.

unset http_proxy
unset https_proxy

Here you have a list of proxy server providers, remember that the proxies server will insert your IP address into the request header or they can sniff your traffic, it's important to care that if you use sensitive information, you have to trust on your proxy supplier.

• Hide My Ass
• Proxy Server List
• Daily HTTP Proxies
• Anonymous Public Proxy Servers

Remember, if you have a scrapper or crawler running on your computer and/or server, it's recommended to use a good proxy  to avoid any ban from server