Having a friend working as a network administrator at a high school, I can tell you that most of these network admins are overworked with nitty gritty paperwork and simply will not have the time to actively play the cat and mouse game with proxy websites. Only a very few minority will actually subscribe to our proxy newsletters from yahoo and google groups, search in yahoo answers, track the proxy listings for new free web proxies to be blacklisted and added to their school content blocks. Most netwok admins will completely rely on the school paid for content filtering systems such as websense, bluecoat, etc. Yes, there are some cases of them signing up in our proxy mailing lists every now and then. How do I know its them? Some used their work email accounts to sign up, without bothering for any stealth which once again highlighted their lack of time and dedication to fighting against bypass proxies. Some actually joined and then email us, the owners of the proxy newsletters to lecture us on the dangers of enabling school students uncensored internet access and to demand that we stop the proxy newsletter and our proxy business immediately. My proxy partner also told me about reading on a network admin's blog where he share self written scripts to analyze Internet access log files in his school and search for potential proxy sites that bypass school filters. Seriously, I do applaud their efforts and as long as there are internet filters, we will have business for providing web bypass services.
Many people are using free proxy sites to anonymously browse the net without leaving traces at the destination websites as well as at their network filters. They have learned that all the sites they visit during school and office hours are either being logged at the office firewalls or are already being blocked from direct access. Further persistent attempts to visit these blocked websites directly are going to raise a flag and they may risk losing their jobs for such unauthorized web surfing activities. At the same time, they are going to get some serious attention and questioning by the IT department if their work computers keep getting infected with the latest computer virus and spyware. We all know where such malware can be frequently found - definitely not on legitimate sites such as wikipedia and yahoo. Once you get the IT department on your trail, they can dig out your entire internet surfing history, mostly filled with exotic pictures and exciting videos totally unrelated to your work scope. Rather than risk their computers or jobs for viewing some blocked sites while being bored at work, they have learnt to use free anonymous web proxy sites to surf anonymously without exposing their real web destinations to the office internet content filters and to bypass blocked sites. Some people are still worried as to whether using proxy websites for unblocking websites are really legal or not. Basically, there is really nothing illegal about using a proxy server for surfing websites legitimately. It is an acceptable method for protecting your computer from hackers, computer viruses, spyware etc that are common on the web. If what you are doing online without using a proxy website is legal, doing so via a proxy does not change it legally. If you are only trying to unblock and hide your access to facebook during the lunch hour, you do not have to worry about infringing the law. However, infringement of company policies are a different issue. The only thing that matters is whether you are caught or not. As a whole, using anonymous web proxies is legal but proxies are also frequently used by shady people to conduct illegal online activities because proxies can help to hide their tracks and IP identities. It is this context where anonymous proxies can appear to be a gray subject - they are legal but can be easily used for illegal activities, it really depend on what your intent is about. However, if you think that you can abuse the free open proxy for blatant illegal activities, you will most likely be caught up and subjected to criminal proceedings based on what you have done through the proxy server.
It is perfectly legal to manage free proxy websites nowadays, at least in the US. Although you may be contacted by law enforcement to assist their investigations, all you need to do is comply politely with their requests and you will be fine. These officers know the nature and purposes of proxy websites so they know that any questionable internet activities are probably attributable to the vast number of proxy users and not directly due to the proxy webmasters. Just give them your server logs to help them track down the person they are after.
Showing posts with label Proxy Spammers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Proxy Spammers. Show all posts
Avoid Abusive Proxy Visitors
The last type of proxy users are your regular friendly spammers and webmasters trying to do something not so clean without exposing themselves as well as other service abusers. These people are trying to break some rules (and maybe some laws as well) without getting caught. They are very experienced users and are not likely to click your ads and make you some pennies. Some webmasters wanted to click their own ads and make some money by cheating the pay per click companies such as Google Adsense and the Adwords advertisers. They try to use your free web proxy to surf your own website and when they click on the ads, the IP address appears to be that of your proxy server and not their own IP. Seems fine, but most of such mischief do get caught some time after. Most proxy owners said that
You tend to get a lot of such abusive proxy visitors by listing your new free proxies at proxy listing sites; that is just the way things are currently. New anonymous web proxies tend to be vulnerable and fall to prey by these abusers - that is why they keep looking out for new proxies online. Imagine yourself as an ordinary student trying to get a bypass school filters proxy from such proxy listing sites to surf outside the school internet censored contents. After being shown a list of twenty proxy servers and lets say all of them have unimaginative domain names like surfme dot com blah blah, nine out of ten times you will click the first few listed proxy url. That is just the way we are – we think the first few bypass proxies should be newer and less loaded. However, you will notice that when your listed free proxy is pushed down to the fourth and lower positions, the traffic hits are still coming. Even when your public proxy is pushed off the first page and appears only on the second page and etc, traffic is still coming! Wow, there are some proxy users that like your proxy url so much that they search for it on the first, second and third page etc until they can find yours and click on it to visit your free web proxy server. Sounds incredible right? But why are your earnings so low despite having lots of traffic coming from the listing sites? If you want real users that tend to click the ads on your proxy webpage and make you some cash, you have to attract the real users by being on the first three listings on such proxy announcement sites. You are only attracting unwanted traffic when your proxy url is off the first three positions.
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