The hidden cost of “free” proxies
When faced with an access ban or a geolocation-based block, users turn to solutions such as proxy servers and VPN services. However, there is another underlying problem: what is offered for free on the web usually ends up being “free”. We recently saw what happened with the Hola VPN, but we cannot expect much honesty from free proxy servers either. If you want to know which servers are the most secure, you should analyze them with the new Proxy Checker service.
This is a typical problem these days: the user wants to access a site, play a video, buy an e-book, or listen to music, and comes across a terrible warning: “The content is not available in your country”. The “island” mentality that some companies have borders on the disturbing, and as always happens in these cases, it is the user who pays the price, in more than one sense. Faced with the absurd refusal to release content, web riders must place their bets on proxy servers, or an adequate VPN connection. A huge number of people turned to the Hola service, mainly for its effectiveness, but selling the bandwidth of its users, even with prior notice, caused a real storm.
Proxy Checker: A security scanner for proxies
To verify the integrity of these free proxy servers, Haschek created the Proxy Checker tool, which evaluates different aspects, including the presence of HTTPS support, protection of the original IP address, and modification of HTML code in served pages. In his study, Haschek put exactly 443 proxy servers under the microscope, and the results were quite disappointing: First, less than 45 percent were online, confirming the weak profile of proxy servers. Then, only 21 percent allowed HTTPS traffic, and 25 percent made modifications to JavaScript or HTML, probably to inject ads or other malicious code (stealing cookies is a good example). The absence of HTTPS is undoubtedly worrying, since anyone can analyze user traffic using basic tools.
How to use Proxy Checker
Fortunately, using Proxy Checker is very simple: enter the server address, choose SOCKS or HTTP, and confirm the reCAPTCHA. My results were consistent with Haschek's, even with a much shorter list. What should the user look for? Basically, a proxy server that protects the IP number, does not alter received content, and offers HTTPS support at the same time.
