Friday, January 13, 2006

Check your proxy anonymity

Here you can check your proxy for anonymity. URLs (see below) have dynamic pages that will show almost all information about your computer. This information can allow any web-server administrator to know when you download files, read pages or see pictures. Therefore, we recommend finding out

what can be known about you on the Internet:

tools-on.net (click the "Go" button) - the really good web site for getting really full information about your computer. Information contains your real IP address ("Client's address we got" into "collected information") if you are not using anonymous proxy, network Information (about your provider, etc.), Domain Information and many many more.

http://ipid.shat.net - contain basic information such as your IP, browser version, screen resolution, platform, java supporting, etc.

http://privacy.net/analyze/ - similar to mentioned above, but also contains detail technical information.

http://www.samair.ru/proxy/proxychecker/ - analyze your proxy connection. If you are using proxy, you can check your anonymity.

http://www.findnot.com/ - shows real location of your computer (country and city), and also your Latitude (on site writed "Latitue") and Longitude.

http://www.all-nettools.com/toolbox,net - popular site for beginners (button "Proxy Test"). Here you can know information about your IP-address ("You came from", or (if it's absent) - "remote address" / "remote host").

If you are using anonymous proxy

It's good :) Do you want to check your real anonymity? Even if your proxy is anonymous (or high anonymous - elite) we can to know your real IP address! If your browser supports Java, just go to:

http://www.inet-police.com/cgi-bin/env.cgi

Environment variables

http://www.glocksoft.net/azenv.php - contain almost all environment variables (this is information that your computer sends to the Internet when you connect to the web-sites). Variables are grouped by importance and selected by color.

The Internet has many addresses like the ones presented here:

http://blake.prohosting.com/fet/env.cgi
http://cpcug.org/scripts/env.cgi

If you think that it's all information about you than can be known through the internet, you are wrong.

If you don't use real anonymous proxy, then anyone using your IP can learn information about you. So...

what can be known about you by IP?

For this test you will need your IP address. If you have troubles with getting this address, or you dont't want to test it, you can look for information about (for example) www.altavista.com - just write this text into "SmartWhois" field.

Use this URL: http://www.all-nettools.com/toolbox

Just put the required address (for example, your IP) into the "SmartWhois" field and press the "Go" button. As a rule (in 99% of all situations) you will get information about your city, and the provider's name.

As a maximum (sometimes) you can know:

  • name and real address of your provider (organization);
  • real city, where are you now;
  • name, phone and e-mail of your provider (person responsible for work of your local network / IP address);
  • (for organizations) name of your organization;
  • (for organizations) real address!

Proxy F.A.Q for beginners

What is a proxy server?

A proxy server is a kind of buffer between your computer and the Internet resources you are accessing (Web sites, FTP archives etc.). The data you request come to the proxy first, and only then it transmits the data to you.


Why I need to use proxy servers ?

  1. Transfer speed improvement. If the file you requested was received before to your proxy server, then proxy server will interrupt this file request and you will receive the file directly from proxy. However need to know, you can got the "speed down" effect. This effect appears when your proxy has long answer time because there is slow connection between you and your proxy server.
  2. Security and privacy. Anonymous proxies destroys information about your computer in the requests header. So you can safely surf the net and your information will never be used by hackers and spammers.
  3. Sometimes you encounter some problems while accessing to web server (for example, web-chat). You have mistaken while working with some data and / or the server administrator restricted access from your IP. So you can use the anonymous proxy and try to access again.


How to setup my browser to use proxy?


Proxy Settings in Internet Explorer 4.X

  1. Click "View" \ "Internet Options");
  2. Click "Connections";
  3. Enable "use a proxy server";
  4. In fields "Address" and "port" type proxy name and proxy port;
  5. If nessesary, enable "bypass proxy server for local addresses";
  6. Click "OK".

Proxy Settings in Internet Explorer 5.X

  1. Click "Service" \ "Internet Options";
  2. Click "Connections";
  3. If you use Dial-Up connection, choose your connection and click "Settings" button.
    if you use LAN connection, click "LAN Settings" button in the "Local Area Network (LAN) Settings" group box;
  4. Enable "use a proxy server";
  5. In fields "Address" and "port", type proxy name and proxy port;
  6. If nessesary, enable "bypass proxy server for local addresses";
  7. Click "OK";
  8. Click "OK" to close IE settings.

Proxy Settings in Internet Explorer 6.X

  1. Click "Service" \ "Internet Options";
  2. Click "Connections";
  3. If you use Dial-Up connection, choose your connection and click "Settings" button.
    if you use LAN connection, click "LAN Settings" button in the "Local Area Network (LAN) Settings" group box;
  4. Enable "use a proxy server";
  5. In fields "Address" and "port", type proxy name and proxy port number;
  6. If nessesary, enable "bypass proxy server for local addresses";
  7. Click "OK";
  8. Click "OK" to close IE settings.

Proxy Settings in Netscape Navigator 4.X

  1. Click "Edit" \ "Preferences";
  2. Click "Category" \ "Advanced" \ "Proxies";
  3. Set "Manual proxy configuration";
  4. Click "View" at "Manual proxy configuration";
  5. Set proxies for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.

Proxy Settings in Netscape Navigator 6.X

  1. Click "Edit" \ "Preferences";
  2. Click "Category" \ "Advanced" \ "Proxies";
  3. Set "Manual proxy configuration";
  4. Click "View" at "Manual proxy configuration";
  5. Set proxies for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.

Proxy Settings in Konqueror

  1. Click "Setting" \ "Configure Konqueror...";
  2. Choose "Proxies";
  3. Enable "Use proxy";
  4. Set proxies for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.

Proxy Settings in Mozilla

  1. Click "Edit" \ "Preferences";
  2. Click "Category" \ "Advanced" \ "Proxies";
  3. Set "Manual proxy configuration";
  4. Click "View" at "Manual proxy configuration";
  5. Set proxies for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.


What is an anonymous proxy server?

Any web site in the world can track your movements through its pages and monitor your reading interests using your IP address, a unique ID assigned to each computer on the Internet. Depending on the policies of the Internet resource, you might not be able to get access to the information you need. Also, your visit can be registered and used later to gather some personal information about you.

It is widely agreed that governments and organizations publish dummy websites on controversial topics for the purpose of monitoring interested parties. Also, this information, in combination with your e-mail address, can be used to increase the number of targeted advertisements fired at you by the marketers.

Using only your IP address and the information about your operating system, a Web site can automatically exploit security holes in your system using some not-very-complex, ready-made, free hacking programs. Some of such programs may just hang your machine, making you reboot it, but other, more powerful ones, can get access to the content of your hard drive or RAM. The anonymous proxy prevents this by hiding your IP address so that no one can access your computer via the network. In most cases, however, proxies do inform the target server about the address of the computer that made the request, transmitting your IP-address in different forms.

Anonymous (real anonymous!) proxy servers don't transfer the information about the IP-address of the client, and thus effectively hide the information about you and your surfing interests. Besides that, some proxy servers can also hide the very fact that you are surfing through a proxy server! Anonymous proxies can be used for all kinds of Web-services.


What is a free proxy server?

It is a proxy server which is free and open for everybody on the Internet. There is quite a large number of public proxy servers in many countries but most of them are not anonymous.


Proxies Classification for "Dummies"

There are several types of proxies. Proxy of each type is designed to solve its specific tasks, however they have much in common, and their abilities coincide in many features.

HTTP Proxy

It is the most widespread type of proxy servers and when you hear just "proxy", it means nothing, but this type of a server. Earlier with a help of this proxy it was only possible to view web pages and pictures and download files. Now, new program versions (ICQ, etc.) know how to work through the HTTP proxies. Browsers of any versions know how to work with this type of proxy.

SOCKS Proxy

These proxy servers know how to work practically with any type of information on the Internet (TCP/IP protocol), however for their use in programs there should be obviously indicated a ability to work with SOCKS proxy. Some additional programs are necessary for using of SOCKS proxies within a browser (browsers do not know how to work through SOCKS proxy). However, any ICQ versions (and many other popular programs) can work perfectly through the SOCKS proxies. At last, we want to pay attention, while working with socks proxies it is necessary to specify its version: socks 4 or socks 5.

CGI Proxy (anonymizer)

This type of proxy server could be accessed only with a browser. In other programs their using is complicated (and one does not need it, there are HTTP proxies). However as this type proxy is initially designed for operation through a browser, one can use it in a very simple way. Moreover, you can construct a chain from CGI proxies without any problems.

FTP proxy

This type of proxies is highly specialized and aimed for work only with FTP servers. You can use these proxies in most popular file managers (FAR. Windows Commander, etc.), download managers (CuteFTP, GetRight, etc.) and in browsers.


Where to get and how to check proxy lists?

Step 1

Step one is the easy one, using search engine at http://www.google.com .
Here you need to choose some known proxy and to type its address and the port value (surrounded by quotations) in the search field. For example "1.1.1.1:1080". Remember that you should better use some fresh but not the newest proxy. The best is to use proxies that are 2-3 days old.
As a result you will get pages containing many other proxies besides the one you were searching for. It's just what you need! Now only copy these links to the Notepad.
Why shouldn't use the newest proxy? That is because search engines do indexing of web-pages only once per week or even per month.

Step 2

If you don't want to use download managers just save all the web-pages to your hard drive manually. Otherwise continue with the step 3.
You should save web-pages manually in the following way. Open the web-pages one by one with any browser (using links from Notepad) and save them as HTML to your hard drive.
Then you skip step 3 and continue with step 4.

Step 3

If you want to speedup the process and to download all the pages at a time use one of the download managers. It's enough to copy all the links from Notepad to the window of the download manager. Let's see how it's done in different programs.

  1. Using Flashget
    You save the links in Notepad (Save As -> choose "Type of files - All Files" -> type filename, for example "proxies.lst" (in any case the extension must be «.lst»). Then you open Flashget and choose «File -> Import list...». Choose "proxies.lst" which was saved before. Press Open. You will see the window with download parameters of the first file. Choose «Start -> Immediately» if you want to start downloading immediately. Don't forget to set the directory where the files will be saved. Press OK. You will see another request «Use the same setting for other files?». Choose «Yes». After that the process of downloading web-pages will begin. And you will find the downloaded pages in the chosen directory.
  2. Using GetRight
    You save the links in Notepad (Save As -> choose "Type of files - All Files" -> Type the filename, for example "proxies.lst" (in any case the extension must be «.lst»)). Open GetRight and choose «File -> Import Download List...». Choose "Files of type: URL Lists" and select "proxies.lst" which was saved before. Press Open. The links from the file will be added to the download window.
    To avoid seeing windows with various options you should disable them. Choose «Tools -> GetRight Configuration -> Advanced -> Miscellaneous». Disable option «Prompt for GetRight Browser or Login Page if downloaded a web page». Then in «Tools -> GetRight Configuration -> General -> Save To» choose «One default directory for all downloads» and set the directory for saving files. Press OK to save the changes.
    Choose "Edit -> Select All" to select all the files in the download window. Press Enter.
    Press "Downloads -> Resume" to start the download. If you see the window which says «Do you wish to start Automatic Downloading instead?» choose «Do not show this message again» and press «No». All the files will be downloaded simultaneously to the directory you have chosen in options.
  3. Using Mass Downloader
    You save web links to the Notepad (Save As -> choose the filename, for example "proxies.txt"). Open the window of "Mass Downloader" and choose «File -> Import -> URLs from file...». Then choose the file "proxies.txt" which was saved before. Press Open. If you see the window which asks for the file's base address «...type the Web URL for the file...» just press OK. You will see the window containing the links from your file. Select all the links (for example using CTRL+A or a button in that window). Press «Download». You will see the window with the download options of the first file. Choose the directory where all the files will be saved. Press OK. You will see the window «Use the same properties for adding the rest of projects?». Choose «Yes». The links from the file will be added to the download window. The process of downloading the pages will begin. You will find all the pages in the chosen directory.
  4. Using ReGet Deluxe
    You save web links to the Notepad (Save As -> choose the filename, for example "proxies.txt"). Open Reget Deluxe. To avoid various windows with options it is recommended to disable one of them.
    Just choose «Options -> Program Options -> enable checkbox «Show advanced properties» -> tab «All Properties» -> Default Download Settings -> «If the file already exist» -> select option «Rename»».
    Open Reget Deluxe and choose «File -> Import queue...». Then choose "Files of type: Plain URL Lists" and select "proxies.txt" which was saved before. Press Open. The links from the file will be added to the download window and the process of downloading web-pages will begin. You will find all the web-pages in the directory you have chosen in options.

Step 4

If you have several HTML files containing the lists of proxy servers you need to combine them into one file before filtering and checking them using "Proxy Checker". That is because the program can only work with one input file. You can skip this step if you are using SOCKS Proxy Checker 1.3 or higher.
So let's unite several files into one. There are several ways to do that. As an example consider that the filenames fit the mask "file?.html".

Two variants are possible:

  1. Copy /b file1.html + file2.html + fileN.html proxylst.html
  2. For %a in (file?.html) do type %a >> proxylst.html

In case (a) file1.html, file2.html, ... fileN.html are the filenames of proxy lists. They can be not only HTML.
In case (b) you need to have file1.html, file2.html, ... fileN.html in the current directory and to launch the command from that directory.

Remember that this way of uniting the files must be changed a bit before using it. That is because the files can have different names.

Step 5

Now you will need "Proxy Checker" (in case of http/https proxy) or "SOCKS proxy checker" (in case of SOCKS proxy).
Choose the file "proxylst.html" (created in Step 4) in <Main -> Source file> (or press "Add..." to add all the needed files containing proxy lists). Choose the name for a new file where the results of checking will be saved. That is done in "Destination file". Press "Run". When the check is finished you will see the new file containing working proxies.


Is the "anonymous proxy" I came across on the Internet really an anonymous one?

Most probably, No. We have studied more than 8,000 public proxy servers and found that only a few hundred of them are true anonymous proxy servers. Although almost half of all servers call themselves "anonymous" because they do not transfer the client's IP address in the standard way, nevertheless the address is present in their requests in other different forms and therefore they do not provide any anonymity. Besides, we found that some proxies transfer the IP address of the client occasionally, from time to time.


Can a proxy make me anonymous to HotMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc, so that I can send anonymous e-mail?

Yes. As long as you are connected to the HotMail server through an anonymous proxy server, your IP address is hidden, and all e-mail that you send with the web-forms on the HotMail server has no track of your true location. It is so for all web-based e-mail services, like mail.com, as well as for web-based chat boards like Yahoo! Chat. There is a possible trap, however: many of such services use a secure connection when you send e-mail or when you logon to your account. Therefore it is very important to make sure that your proxy supports HTTPS and configure your browser to use the proxy for the Secure protocol in addition to the ordinary HTTP.


I have downloaded a free proxy server, but proxy doesn’t work, though it’s a successfully tested. What could be the reason?

There could be several reasons:

  1. The proxy server is operational, but because it's remote from you and the proxy is too slow, it takes quite a while for the response to reach your PC - therefore, you think the proxy doesn't work;
  2. Your ISP has restricted access to certain web-sites and then it has found out your were using the proxy server to access these prohibited web-sites. As a result, your ISP has restricted access to this proxy server (only!) for you (only!).
  3. The proxy server's ISP (a proxy-server is a computer connected to the Internet, it also has its own ISP) has denied access to the proxy server from your network (or from your ISP - for competition reasons :-) ). In fact, there could be many reasons for this, absolutely beyond you and not anyhow related to you;
  4. The proxy server's settings prohibit the use of the proxy server from your network (see item 3);
  5. This proxy server is a corporate proxy, that means it has a list of computers (allowed IP addresses) which are allowed to use it. In this case, even if your neighbour uses this proxy successfully, access to this proxy server may be closed for you;
  6. And finally... It could be that you have set your proxy incorrectly! These things also happen. See on how to set up a proxy server.


How to bypass a corporate proxy server?

In this case you can use:

  • anonymizers (CGI proxy)
  • a chain of proxy servers (read about proxy chaining in our proxy FAQ)