Last couple of years, anonymizers becomes more and more popular among web surfers. Since they are easy to use and the owners never ask users to pay for their service. Just small group of users realize the risk of using such services. Nobody knows how to select right anonymizer and prevent stealing their personal information.

Just imagine the simple scenario: you want to access facebook or bebo from the place (school, university, work) where they are blocked. The easiest and cheapest (FREE) solution seems to be anonymizer.

You open facebook web site though anonymizer and now you enter your user name and password in the fields and press login button BUT did you pay attention that your browser is sending your password to anonymizer web site instead of facebook? The anonymizer will forward your user name and password to facebook web site... you will pass authentication and login to your member area, it looks like everyone is happy

STOP! Your user name and password sent to anonymizer!!! They can simply save it and later access your member area, send some spam to your friends or some other dirty stuff. You will never think that your password was stolen by anonymizer To be honest the word stolen is not very accurate because you SHARE your password by your own

BTW web sites which are used to steal your password are called phishing web sites. They look like original ones and the victim enters his password without hesitations. After 5-10 seconds his password automatically changed and he lost access to his account (for example PayPal). Even browsers (Firefox) start blocking such web sites automatically, warning users about possible phishing.

BUT hackers found a solution, instead of creating such phishing web site; they use anonymizers to steal the password Just to let you know how easy and cheap is to install such fake anonymizer: hacker needs one domain (10 USD), small shared hosting (5 USD) and the PHP script which could be installed within 30 minutes. So it looks attractive for hacker to steal thousand facebook accounts for just 15 USD

That is why I strongly recommend that if you want to use anonymizer, use only trusted ones. For example if you will see some anonymizer run by uknown person you should never use it. BUT at the same time if a big web site which is 2-3 years old runs the same service, feel free to use it. The main rule you should use, is the web site's reputation's price. For example, the price of FreePorxyList.org reputation is worth 50.000 USD, it is useless to use such expensive web site for stealing your facebook password, which has high value only for you

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

Before saying anything about BotNet proxy server I must warn you that: ALL BOTNET PROXY SERVERS ARE ILLEGAL AND EVEN THEIR SIMPLE USAGE FOR WEB SURFING IS TREATED AS BREAKING THE LAW. That is why I strongly recommend you never use them if you do no want to have big problems...
 
But why BotNet proxy servers are illegal? How do they work? Of course the most detailed articles about them are written on wikipedia.org, you can read the article here BotNet. If you want just a short description of BotNet proxy server here it is: each program and operating system has vulnerability, so called exploits. Hackers use exploits to secretly install their little software on victims' PC. That little software works like a slave BOT (also known as robot). When it gets commands from the master, it performs them on victims PC and after sends work results back.

So BotNet proxy works in the following way. You send web request (open a web page for example) to the server where master is located. The master forwards your request to one of his slave bots, they do request (open a web page) on victim's PC and send result to the master, later master will forward reply to you.

From the first sight it looks like such proxy servers are the best to hide your trap... but wait a second, let me explain what you will get as a result:

1) You cannot have the same IP all the time. Each request is done though different slave BOT, so your outgoing IP is always changed. You will notice this problem when you will decide to login on some web site... For security reasons most web sites bind your authentication to your IP. If your IP changed that means you are in different place or someone else is trying to login, so the system will ask you to login again and again because your IP is changing after every request...
 
2) You will have a big delay between your requests and replies... master needs time to get reply from slave BOT, and slave BOT in turn needs time to open a web site and send result back. You request's speed depends on the victim’s internet connection quality.

3) Most important is that you put yourself under high risk when you use BotNet proxy servers. There is not difference if you use such BotNet proxy server for opening a google.com web page or for something illegal. You use stolen PC and that is already breaking the law!!!

BTW if you will be caught using BotNet proxy servers, you could be asked to pay fine it will be really hard to prove that you have not done the hacking and just bought a BotNet proxy Imagine, the monthly rent price for each dedicated server is ~300 USD. The BotNet proxy servers use over 5.000-10.000 such servers, so you can imagine the size of the fine you will be forced to pay

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

PlanetLab and others provide users with so called CoDeeN proxy servers. Let's say 3 or 4 years ago you could find CoDeeN proxy server even on our first Proxy-List.org web site but not now. The keep the same strategy for our new FreeProxyList.org web site, here is the main reason why we do so:

The biggest problem is that they keep all user activity and even do not hide that. They use it for different purposes... Of course you could think that you are not doing anything illegal and you do not see any problem if they will know what web sites you are browsing, what emails you are sending and even your facebook password

YES! They could see all your chat messages, emails and even passwords if they are not sent though SSL tunnel. Even more who will guarantee that their logs will be not be stolen by some third party and later used against you?

That is why we strongly recommend everyone think twice before using such service. They do not guarantee that your identity will be kept private, plus your passwords could be stolen...

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

Dedicated proxy servers are the same public proxy servers but with slight difference. You must use your user name and password before you will be able to use dedicated proxy server. Also please pay attention that with dedicated proxy server you will have always the same ONE IP address, which you will never be able to change.

The advantage of dedicated proxy server is that they have very high speed connection and 100% uptime. But actually, I saw many users moving to our public proxy servers from such services... They told us that despite the fact we have public proxy servers, they are much stable and less loaded.

The reason why dedicated servers had 40-60% uptime instead of 100% was simple: the owners of such service simply do not care about single client. They sell the same one IP to thousands of clients... while one IP could handle max. 10 average clients. You will also pay attention that they never reply to your email with questions... they prefer easy and fast money. They do not care about their reputation. If you do not believe me try to send them a question and wait when you will get their reply (of course, if you get it ).

Why public proxy servers are more stable? Just pay attention to our real time stats for last 24 hours. You will see that we have at least 15.000 different proxy servers during 24 hours. At the same time the average amount of clients are 50-100. With simple math 15.000/100 = 150 proxy servers for each user!!! Also we have developed very easy to use addon for Firefox Premium Proxy Switcher. It allows user setup, switch, delete, load proxy server(s) with single click including automatic proxy list download and automatic proxy switch if needed.

Ok, lets move back to the main topic if dedicated proxy server provider could provide you with 100% uptime and 100mbit speed then we can say that the main advantage is stability + speed. BUT you should take into account that your privacy is under high risk. The owners of such services store all your activity!!! They will explain to you that they will never give that logs to any third party, and they keep them only for security reasons. BUT who knows? will they keep faith or not? Also if you like to surf porn sites for examole, later the administrator of dedicated proxy server will know all your secret sexual dreams

Some kind of conclusion: dedicated proxy servers are good only in very few cases. When you do not need to keep your identity secure and the proxy speed is most important for you. BUT in that case I have logical question: why do you use proxy servers if your identity is public available?

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

Public proxy servers are called 'public' since they could be used by anyone... this is the one that does not require even user name or password to use it. Of course some public proxy server could block user requests for certain countries but that is done for security reasons (there are so called high risk countries, where 90% requests could be illegal, hacking attempts).

Almost every user asks us a question: why someone runs proxy servers for FREE? Everyone knows that nothing is done for free in our world. The exception is charity organization and... that is it There are several reasons why I cannot tell you many details... but let's speak generally why public proxy server are free:

As the first step - administrator setups a squid proxy server (most popular proxy server) on his server. If he will not change anything in the settings then by default proxy server will behave like public one. As you already know, public proxy server means that anyone from entire the world, who knows the IP and the port of such server, could use it. The proxy server will not ask him for any user name or password.

But actually everything is much easier; you do not need to know the port to use the proxy... If administrator left default settings then the port would be 3128. Some adminstrators think that they are too smart and they change default port to 80 or 8080. They think they are smart but 80 and 8080 another alternative standard. So you have three options of possible default port 80, 8080 and 3128

So what do you need to find a good and fast public proxy server? Just an IP address... that is why some users used to make IP scans... they search for wide range of IPs searching for any public proxy servers.

WARNNG: any port or IP scans are prohibited by the low, so you could have a big problem if you will do it. For your own safety, please never try it by your own!!! Also you should never use any proxy server without asking permissions from the owner. If you find any proxy, simply contact the administrator and ask him if you could use and share it with others.

That is just one example how public proxy servers are created... and there are dozens of other ways how public proxy servers may also be created. 

What are the advantages of public proxy servers? The main one is your privacy. Just imagine, public proxy servers are used by thousand and thousand new users from the entire world daily. Some users could think that is disadvantage rather than advantage... but do not hurry with your conclusion
 
If you used public proxy servers, it is almost impossible to find your activity (web requests) among other users activity. The log files, in case they are kept (most servers simple delete them because of big space they took), they are several gigabytes (1gb = 1.000.000 bytes) in size, while your request is just 20-40 bytes .

That means after max. 24 hours nobody will be able (even theoretically) to find your activity (web requests) even in logs It is absolutely impossible and looks the same like to search a needle in haystack (it is possible only theoretically). But if you steal one million dollar, be sure they will burn down the whole haystack to find you

But of course public proxy servers have some disadvantages... the main one is that they die and get alive and then die and get alive again very fast and on regular basis. For the regular user it is really boring to searching for the working one... BUT this affects only 'other' users, our VIP members never have such problem

We developed our engine so it works 24 hours per day and does proxy check every 30 seconds for you. At any time our VIP member can have most recently checked (just 30-60 seconds ago) proxy list... Also we have developed special addon for Firefox (Premium Proxy Switcher) which helps you manage proxy list automatically, including automatic proxy load and proxy switch in your browser and much, much more!!!

Please do not forgot that with public proxy severs you have hundreds working proxy servers from different countries and cities. That makes even theoretically impossible to track your online activity. You can change your virtual country location within seconds

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

Today we will speak about different proxy types...some can say that we already spoke about this and the article was already written and posted on our forum, but it isn't so. The article you could think about is about proxy type from the point of anonimity and can be found here What is an anonymous proxy server? But right now we are going to speak about different thing so fasten your belts and get ready to dip into the world of proxy servers world.

So let's start from the main thing - advantages and disadvantages of each proxy type: public proxy servers, dedicated proxy servers, CoDeeN and PlanetLab like proxy servers, BotNets proxy severs and finally so called anonymousness.

Not many of you know that all proxy servers may look similar from the point of their usage, but actually they could be of different types. It is a bit hard to say which type is better, since each type has its own purpose but some of proxy servers should be NEVER USED! That was the main purpose that made me to write that article. I have to tell you the truth, and later you can decide by your own whether the risk is worth when you use proxy servers of some 'dangerous' type.

* Public proxy servers
* Dedicated proxy servers
* CoDeeN and PlanetLab like proxy servers
* BotNets proxy severs
* So called anonymousness

I guess you've already read the articles above and if yes, then you should already have the answer to your main question: which proxy type is the most secure and brings you - ZERO problems.

Also now you know how some proxy providers attract users with so called speed and stability So before you will buy or use any of them make sure you know what you are doing and whether it worth to risk at all?!

Good luck guys and have some safe online surfing time

Keep visiting our forum to read interesting articles Needless to say, if you have question related to this article or you are interested in something else, you are more then welcome to post your questions here

The problem was that your VIP password was expired. Our engine still allows you to generate download link but another part deletes it automatically after one minute since it was expired.

Thank for bug report, the problem fixed.

Примечания к релизу Версии 1.0.9

Premium Proxy Switcher 1.0.9 версия включает в себя много новшеств и исправлений мелких ошибок.

Начнем наверно с новшеств:
* Мы добавили горячие клавиши на все главные операции, таким образом вам больше не нужно использовать мышку что бы сменить, удалить, загрузить, включить или выключить прокси сервер. Все горячие клавиши были подобраны таким образом что бы были легко досягаемые и выполнены одной рукой.
* Мы добавили красивые и в тоже время смысловые иконки к каждому пункту меню. Вам больше не надо читать все меню, вы можете легко найти нужную вам операцию просматривая иконки.
* Мы улучшили прокси парсер, загрузку прокси с личного URL-а (независимый источник). Теперь прокси могут находится даже в HTML формате, разделенные словами или даже тегами. Наше дополнение будет искать IP адрес в формате A.B.C.D, а за порт возьмет комбинацию чисел из макс. 5 идущих за ним. Таким образом 99% личных URL-ов независимых источников смогут без проблем работать с нашим Premium Proxy Switcher-ом.
* В связи с тем что многие пользователи возмущались что мы уделяем мало внимания бесплатным пользователям, вот вам новшество которое было сделано специально для вас. Начиная с этой версии флаги стран будут отображаться и для прокси серверов с независимых источников (если вы не понимаете цену данной новшества, данная опция использует 30% наших серверных ресурсов, каждый прокси сервер должен быть проверен с 200.000 разными IP интервалами, для определения страны к которому прокси принадлежит).

Что же касается исправления ошибок и изменениях:
* Некоторые пользователи указывали что немного трудно понять что надо делать после того как прокси лист был загружен. По этой причине мы изменили логику, после скачивания листа из списка автоматически выбирается случайное прокси.
* Мы добавили возможность менять прокси сервер даже если использование прокси для проводника отключено.
* Мы добавили немного новых сообщений, которые должны облегчить пользователям определение что они делают не правильно и как устранить неисправность.
* Несколько сообщений были переведены на русский язык, в предыдущих версиях они были только на английском языке.
* По просьбе нескольких пользователей, мы увеличили допустимый интервал для автоматического скачивания прокси и автоматической смены прокси, с 30 до 60 минут.
* Мы исправили ошибку, когда дополнение продолжало отображать иконку что прокси включен, после того как пользователь вручную отключил использование прокси сервера через Firefox > Tools > Options...

Release Notes for Version 1.0.9

Premium Proxy Switcher 1.0.9 comes with lots of new features and little bugs fixes.

First let’s say about new features:
* We have added shortcuts to all operations, so now you do not need to use your mouse to switch, delete, load, enable or disable proxy servers. The key shortcuts were selected to be easily reached with single hand.
* We add cute and meaningful icons to each menu item. You do not need to read the whole menu any more. You can easily find appropriate operation you need by watching the icons.
* We improved proxy parser for third party proxy URL. Now all proxy servers could be even in HTML format, separated with words or other tags. The addon will try to find IP in format A.B.C.D and the port will be taken max 5 digits next to it. That means 99% third proxy provides URLs will work with Premium Proxy Switcher.
* Since many users claim that we do not count free users, here is another innovation you will definitely like. Country flags work for third party proxy provider URLs  (case you do not understand the price of our present, that feature will load 30% of our servers, each proxy should be tested against 200.000 different IP ranges to identify its country).

As for the bug fixes and changes:
* Some users complain that it is a bit complicated to find out what they have to do after proxy list is downloaded. So we have changed the logic and if you have no proxy server selected, after download the random one will be automatically selected.
* We add possibility to switch proxy servers even if proxy server is disabled for browser.
* We add some more informative messages to help users understand what they are doing wrong and how to solve the problem.
* Also we translate couple of messages to Russian, before that they were only on English.
* We increased allowed automatic download and automatic change interval from 30 up to 60, as it was requested by our users.
* We fixed problem when addon keeps showing that proxy is enabled icon after user disabled proxy server manually from Firefox > Tools > Options...

Believe me that tutorial will 100% help to solve you problem. I worked as system administrator in a big company and I used to block access to some social networks by myself so I know how it works.

I you will have any difficulty with solving your problem please never hesitate to contact us via forum or live chat (middle section of web site’s header) if you prefer to make it faster

We are here to help each and every internet surfer.

Примечания к релизу Версии 1.0.8
* По просьбе Andres Hernandez был устранен маленькая ошибка связанная с загрузкой списка доступных стран. Некоторые пользователи могли иметь проблемы с закачкой прокси листов с нашей VIP зоны.
* Также изменили интерфейс окошка настроек. Так как автоматическое скачивание прокси листа а также автоматическая смена прокси относятся к обоим: VIP и независимому прокси сервису, мы поместили их в отдельную группу.
* В связи с тем что у некоторых пользователей проблемы с пониманием слова "собственный" мы поменяли его на более понятный "независимый источник". Надеемся что теперь они перестанут писать лживые отзывы.

п.с. хотя все это больше похоже что наши конкуренты стараются понизить популярность нашего дополнения. В любом случае СПАСИБО вам парни ваши лживые отзывы только доказывают что мы выполнил большую работу и наше дополнение и в правду хорошее

Release Notes for Version 1.0.8
* As it was requested by Andres Hernandez (the Firefox reviewer) the little bug with country list load was fixed. Some users could experience slight problem with downloading proxy servers from our VIP zone.
* Also we have changed preference window’s GUI a bit. Since automatic proxy download and automatic proxy switch belongs to both: VIP and third party services, we moved them to separated box.
* Since some user cannot understand the meaning of word CUSOMAIZED we have changed label to ‘third party proxy service’. We hope now they will stop posting fake revues.

p.s. it looks more like those users are sent by competitor web sites; they are trying to reduce popularity of our addon. Anyway THANK you very much guys your fake revues means that we did great job and addon is really good

Thank you very much for your post. As I understand you want a feature which allows you to add proxy servers manually. Do you also want to be able to copy or modify already loaded proxy servers manually from addon? We will try to implement it within next update

BTW we are going to implement proxy checking in our engine, so you will not need to use some other third party proxy checking programs.

Release Notes for Version 1.0.7
* Very useful feature was implemented which displays proxy server’s country flag. The first suggestion was to place just a country code but during beta tests it got clear that such codes are difficult to read and to make process more comfortable we placed country flag instead. Since one cannot remember all country flags we also added hints with country name.

Примечания к релизу Версии 1.0.7
* Была добавлена очень полезная возможность, отображать флаг страны к которой относится прокси. Сначала было предложение добавить только код страны, но во время бета тестов стало ясно что читать такой код очень сложно. По этой причине мы заменили код, флагом страны, а так как пользователь может не помнить изображения флага всех стран, мы добавили подсказки в виде названия страны.

Примечания к релизу Версии 1.0.6
* Был решен еще один вопрос безопасности, связанный с использованием SetInterval() функции. Функцию заменили на более безопасный аналог nsITimer.
* Также еще одна ошибка в интерфейсе была исправлена. Пункт меню "Включить прокси сервер" оставался активным даже тогда когда не был выбран ни один прокси сервер.

Release Notes for Version 1.0.6
* One more security issue related to SetInterval() function usage was fixed. The function was changed to more secure analogue nsITimer.
* Also one more interface bug was fixed. ‘Enable proxy server’ menu item remains enabled even if no proxy server was selected.

Примечания к релизу Версии 1.0.5
* Были устранены замечания по безопасности в связанными с использованием функции 'eval' для извлечения данных в формате JSON. Так как функции необходимые для этого поддерживается только в Firefox 3.5, а официальный продукт JSON имеет проблемы с Firefox 2.0, мы приняли решение хранить данные в своем формате (что в свою очередь понизило затраты трафика, так как данные лучше упакованы).
* Также был устранен маленький баг связанный с появлением ошибки при первом старте. Окошко настроек отображалось раньше чем загружались доступные страны и порты прокси серверов.

Release Notes for Version 1.0.5
* There was security issue connected with ‘eval’ function usage to parse JSON data. Since JSON parser is included only in Firefox 3.5 and official JSON parse script has some bugs with Firefox 2.0 we have decided to store all data in our own format (that in turn reduces traffic usage, since data is better packed).
* Also we fixed little bug with error which occurred on first run. The preferences window was displayed before country and port list were downloaded.

Если у вас есть предложения как улучшить Premium Proxy Switcher (новые возможности, которые стоит добавить) ИЛИ вы нашли ошибку, пожалуйста напишите здесь.

Спасибо заранее за ваш вклад в улучшении Premium Proxy Switcher