Anonymous Proxy usage is on the rise. This is because an anonymous proxy can help you bypass Internet restrictions or Internet censorship. An anonymous proxy is an Internet server that you connect to and that appears to be your ISP’s Internet server to any site that you visit. The websites that you visit when connected to an anonymous proxy see the proxies IP address and not the IP address of your ISP, or employer. This helps bypass restrictions based on IP address. If your IP address is banned or blocked, then by using the IP address of the anonymous proxy, you are bypassing the ban.

Anonymous surfing is slightly different. In addition to hiding your IP address, anonymous surfing is the process of being invisible on the web. With an anonymous proxy that encrypts your website traffic, you make virtually impossible for someone to monitor your Internet surfing. All they will see is the encrypted traffic which is almost impossible to decipher.

When you surf anonymously by using encryption, then the data that you send not only can’t be read, its hard to block. Let’s say that you are in mainland China and researching democracy. By encrypting your searches, the Chinese government won’t know what you are looking for. This bypasses the block on those searches. Let’s also assume that the New York Times website is blocked by the Chinese. Again, the URL that you enter into your browser is encrypted so it cannot be monitored. This also means it can’t be blocked.

Anonymous Proxy and Anonymous Surfing are keys to being safe on the Internet. Safe from hackers and thieves. And safe from repressive governments.

For most of us, we don’t worry about being anonymous because we don’t live in a repressed society. However, governments aren’t the only ones watching you. Hackers and thieves are watching you too. Using an anonymous proxy can also protect you from would be thieves.

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This is far from accurate though. While the government certainly does, and this is no secret, record things about the American people, it is certainly only for our safety. Ever since the 9/11 bombings, our country has stepped up security three-fold. This is most noticeable in the airports; the conduit for the brutal attacks. Where you used to go through security with pretty much just a visual check and a quick metal detector, you now spend quite a bit of time. It is not uncommon to see a person having to take off coat, shoes, and belt to be searched and patted down, to make sure they are not a threat. To most though, this is just an annoyance and means they have to wake up even earlier for their flight lest they miss it due to a convoluted security check.

Annoying as they might be, these time consuming practices help our country stay safe every day. The Patriot Act is a bill enacted by the government that essentially gives them free reign to look over any communications and intercept and listen to them, whether it be public or private. While most Americans support the government, especially if the government is just trying to look out for the people’s safety, the Patriot Act raised some eyebrows. People were worried that it would be the coming of Big Brother and the government would watch them do everything.

This is hardly true, but it is important to be knowledgeable and enjoy some privacy. Start with your Internet connection. Use an anonymous proxy server and surf the web anonymously and safely. Your private proxy will make you untraceable to any interlopers wishing to follow your online data trail.

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This is true of most countries, the United States being the most prominent. There are some places where the government censorship is running rampant and is instated unwillingly upon its citizens. These places are few and far between, but are highly publicized for their censorship and other injustices on their citizens. China is a prime example. “The Great Firewall of China” is what China’s censoring agenda is satirically known as, and its citizens are becoming fed up with it. The people of this nation used to just be defeated by it, and would never do anything to try and help themselves out of desperation, but recently, movements have been made to free them. People in the Americas and other free nations set up proxy servers to send aid to their companions in less-than-democratic nations. These anonymous proxies ensure anonymous browsing for the citizens, who run the risk of being caught for their “crimes”; YouTube, FaceBook, etc.

An anonymous proxy is a god-send for them. These servers can avoid the government censorship in place in many of these places, and allow them to get to the sites they want to. By using these servers, the citizens can also remain safe from the Internet police who roam the Internet, looking for rogue citizens. The proxy will actually conceal their identity because their IP address, which points back to them in China, will change and can be changed to one of a totally different country.

Imagine having to buy your child a computer with censoring software installed on it against your will. That is one thing, but imagine buying yourself a computer with this software on it! It would be infuriating, and would not fly in the U.S. or any other democratic nation. For people of China though, this is a reality. The newly instated Green Dam software blocks many things, and even things pertaining to anti-communism. The system is not infallible though; an anonymous proxy could easily break through the blocks.

The proxy acts as a middleman in the Internet transaction; you request the site from it, and it goes and gets it for you. This way, the fact that you visited the site is never recorded, and you can then freely surf. In fact, if anyone looked at your browsing history, all they would see is the name of the proxy server over and over and over again. While this might not matter to many Americans, if the secret Chinese police seize their computer, they would find no evidence of the innocent citizen committing the heinous crime of “broadcasting themselves.”

The bottom line is, an anonymous proxy will ensure an anonymous browsing experience for American and non-American alike. For Americans, an anonymous proxy will stop hackers from getting their IP address and tracking them. For Chinese residents and other non-free places, an anonymous proxy will get them past the privacy issues and other government censorship.

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The plan was offered up for discussion on Tuesday. This goal is to create a system that can “purify society.”

They are definitely on the offensive. One group, the China Illegal Internet Information Reporting Center, has been seeking out sites and warning them to take down their offensive content. They are afraid of no one, even going after the Chinese Google for hosting vulgar images and sexual content!

China has always had a history of interfering with people’s freedom rights by censoring and blocking content deemed inappropriate, or harmful to their Communist party. Internet-savvy citizens can easily get around these blocks through a myriad of ways, but this new computer installation software could prevent them from doing so any longer, and they are up in arms.

The software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, will be used (as stated by the company) to block pornography and other sexually explicit content, but some suspect it is just another device to stop people from visiting websites with opposing political views.

Once people got a hold of the software, and began dissecting it, some major flaws were found. After some extrapolation, they found that computers running the Green Dam software could actually be commandeered by some interloper with a mind to break through the bugged security. While the Chinese officials have claimed they ordered programmers to fix this, American companies like Dell and HP are worried for customers. They have asked China to reconsider this technology, but to no avail. Unfortunately, they can’t just refuse to sell to China either; a large part of their customer base is the Chinese.

The largest manufacturer of computers in China, Lenovo, refused to make comment on the subject and revealed no information.

This discrepancy of information was created Monday, when the English written newspaper in China, The China Daily, reported from an unofficial source in Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that the Chinese government was planning on making the software come on a separate disk, or just installed in preliminary set-up files: it would be optional.

As telephone call after telephone call went into the Ministry, it turns out the speaker wasn’t speaking the truth, and they offered no backup of what he or she said. This means, as of right now, no plans are made to rescind the mandatory software.

A couple of days later, the Ministry contacted computer companies and told them that the software may be delivered in disk form, but must be installed as back-up files to the computer. This solidifies the Chinese’s stance; the software is on the system no matter what.

New controversy is boiling over this situation. One software company, called Solid Oak Software, is coming down hard on the two companies that programmed the Green Dam program, Jinhui Computer System Engineering and Dazheng Human Language Technology. Solid Oak claims that these two companies plagiarized a lot of their programming code for the Green Dam software. The two Chinese companies acknowledge the similarities, but deny any stealing or copying of Solid Oak’s programs.

Solid Oak is deciding whether or not to take legal action, and has sent numerous letters to urge HP and Dell to halt production of these computers with the Green Dam software installation.

This software has been proven to hold security bugs, and while developers are working on them, it’s hard to get everything. This will be as important a time as any for Chinese citizens and netizens to stay safe and protected online. An anonymous proxy will help them in their Internet ventures, and it could probably even get around the ridiculous blocks that will be instated. Staying anonymous under these peeping eyes is a greater necessity when, not only is a government watching you, but so is some software on your own computer.

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The use of an anonymous web proxy can allow you to do more than just hide your IP address. It also allows you to have more freedom to explore websites that are restricted for some reasons, including government restrictions. Many schools, offices, organizations impose these restrictions, but our focus is on bypassing government censorship for military personnel abroad.

There are instances where there is limited choice when it comes to accessing the Internet. This means that there is limited freedom, and service men and women would only get to access websites which the government of the country they are stationed in believes to be harmless, and block those that are they considered objectionable.

This foreign government restriction can be easily bypassed through the effective use of an anonymous proxy. Even with the more stringent measures employed by the more repressive governments, an anonymous proxy can tunnel through those filters.

Most Middle East countries have these types of restrictions. In these countries, people are fed with information that would lead them to believe in a certain way. Their government does this by imposing continuous control and monitoring of Internet activities. All surfers are tracked, and anyone who views sites that are considered immoral or objectionable by the government could go to jail.

Some specific countries that enforce censorship are China, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Syria. Some of them block websites while others block by keywords. There are different reasons for censorship that vary from country to country – culture, religion, political, etc. It is also worth noting that many of these countries enforce very strict censorships on other media that already infringe on the rights of their people, it’s not just the Internet.

It is in this kind of situation where the need for anonymity on the Internet becomes very important. With the principle of free exchange of ideas and information, it is an advantage if one can hide their identity, which can be effectively done by using an anonymous web proxy.

The use of a proxy is advocated by many groups of individuals who uphold, protect and promote the fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech and the right to privacy. They believe that cyberspace should neither have borders nor limitations for exchange of data and information. Due to the action enforced by local authorities in some countries, there is a greater need to bypass government censorship. Using anonymous surfing to bypass government censorship is a sure way to ensure that people, and specifically US Military personnel stationed around the world have uncensored access to the Internet.

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