What Is A Proxy And How Does It Work?

Today, almost all of us use the Internet. It is a useful communication tool, a source of information and a great helper in your daily work.

However, it cannot be denied that the Internet is also a threat that is worth defending against effectively. Both from the side of the security of our data and the privacy of the network, which is under attack from different directions. One useful solution is a proxy server. What is it and how does it work? Let’s try to answer these questions.

What is a proxy?

In simple terms, a proxy is a type of server that “runs” between the user’s computer and the target server with which the user is communicating. Regardless of whether we are using a browser, an application or a program that uses network access, the information we send first reaches the proxy server and then is sent to the server from which we want to download the information.

There are several different types of proxies that differ in the level of privacy and anonymity they can provide to their users. You can choose between transparent and anonymous proxies.

A more advanced and advanced form of a proxy server is a VPN server that provides much more security, allows you to better protect your privacy, and very often offers additional features and capabilities. Importantly, its use does not require any special skills from the user.

What does the use of a proxy give us?

A proxy server has many uses. First, it works well in a situation where we often use the same sites. Nowadays, every website sends a lot of information to its visitors. Some of them are repeated every time. This is information, for example, about the background of the page or other permanent elements. There are proxy servers, for example, at you-proxy.com that can speed up the loading of content from websites. When we use such a proxy, they are stored on a closer staging server (w3cache), which can significantly speed up the loading of web pages.

In addition, a proxy server can help hide our IP address, which can come in handy when we want to provide some degree of privacy on the Internet. Our request, such as the website address that we enter in the browser, first goes through a proxy server and then goes to the server hosting the website. As a result, the server from which we download and send data cannot determine where the request originally came from.

Thus, a proxy is a type of protection that can work in many situations. It allows us to hide our IP address, making our location harder to find on the website we are using. Moreover, the proxy allows pages to load faster thanks to the caching feature. Thus, it is a decision to be considered when using the Internet on a daily basis.

Most complex websites that restrict users from specific locations to some content do not allow proxies. If any request is identified as a proxy, such a request will give nothing in return, you will not be given access to the resource.
If you are going to access such a website using anonymous proxies would be counterproductive, you need to use highly anonymous proxies that will not identify themselves as proxies.