Anonymous Proxy Review

I’d like to offer a “review” of sorts of my experience with Private Proxy – a software services company that provides anonymous server proxy protection.  First a bit of background.  I’m what you might call a “retail” user of the internet – I don’t have a web site of my own, I don’t try to create traffic on someone else’s website by “hitting” it many times, etc., my wife and I simply “use” the internet for email, surfing, banking, communication with family through Facebook, Google, etc.  We have 4 computers in the house (they accumulate over time like dust bunnies) and we both use the internet often through the day and often at the same time.

Over the past month or so there have been a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, that frankly, scared the bejeezus out of us.  We knew that surfing the internet exposes us to identity theft and that third parties of all kinds can, do, and are probably in some cases legally required (like our ISP) to monitor all our online activities.  Now we believe our internet use is a private matter (doesn’t everyone?).  And we don’t feel that by tracking our internet preferences third parties can “better” market us through more targeted advertising to create a “better” internet experience for us.  Call us old fashioned but we would rather make those choices for ourselves – privately.  The WSJ articles made clear that ANY internet usage by an individual can both expose that user to invasions of privacy and outright dangerous – like going to a gun fight with only a knife.  All this got us thinking about ways to protect ourselves.

We were, and still are, doing a number of things already.  Each weekend we run a program on each computer called “Evidence Eliminator” which cleans our computers of traces of where we have been.  We run registry cleaners, disk de-fragmentation software and SpyBot.  We also surf with IE8′s “in Private” turned on, but that does nothing to protect our identities online.  Where we were not covered was with our IP address out “in the wild” on the internet.  And the WSJ articles made it clear to us that exposing your IP address to third parties on the internet is one of the prime ways to “be at risk” on the net.

That got us looking into anonymous IP address alternatives.  The first place I looked was my ISP provider – not surprisingly they did not offer such a service.  Next we looked at using those free services where you go to an anonymous IP provider’s website and from there plug in the place you want to surf to.  That was a non-starter out of the gate – just way to messy and time consuming and bothersome.  The next alternative was companies that provide a paid for service to give you anonymous IP web protection real time all the time.

So I fired up “The Google” and started researching these companies. A handful surfaced to the top and were each similarly priced.  I ended up going with Private Proxy even though it was slighter higher priced than its competitors: A) because it offered IP address changes every 30 minutes, versus every 24 hours by its nearest competitor, and B) it offered 128 bit encryption on my web traffic – this seemed to me to be very secure.

Having now used the Private Proxy service I am very satisfied.  Installation of their software was easy and simple – very intuitive.  My surfing experience has also been excellent.  Web surfing speeds did drop slightly but I could only tell if I run a YouTube video in 1080p mode around peak hours in the evening.  During the day I can’t tell any difference in online speed experience.

So on the three most important items, Private Proxy is a winner for us:

1)            Gives us peace of mind with 30 minute ip address changes and 128 bit encryption

2)            Easy seamless installation and behind the scenes operation

3)            A virtually zero effect on internet speed experience.

Lastly, to finish this review, customer support from this company has also been excellent.  I have had professional and quick responses by a real person each time I’ve had a question.

Rob, Boston

To try Private Proxy for yourself, please follow the link for the Proxy Free Trial Offer.

Be Sociable, Share!

•