Anonymous Proxies are both a boon and menace to the Internet. And like a lot of other tools such as BitTorren and DVD/CD Burning thier intended use has become quite corrupted, but they still provide valuable services for those who legitimately need it.

The concept of posting anonymously on the Internet is far from new. Internet Rage has been around for as long as the Internet. People have been stalked, bullied, threatened, and even murdered because they did not protect themselves online.

Anonymous Proxies were first created to help those being stalked, bullied and threatened to protect themselves in yet another way. They work by disguising the user’s IP address, a number that is in theory unique to one machine. That is of course not 100% true, but would take another blog post to explain in detail. These days there are tons of free proxies that users can go to. And even Pay for Use sites. By entering in the domain of the site they want to go to, the Web Proxy reroutes all their traffic through a different IP address. When the stalker traces the user’s IP address they would find it belonged to the Proxy company or person.

But by hiding under various Countries’ privacy laws, some Proxies Owners are able to allow their users to engage in illegal behaviors. Child Pornography, Terrorism, and various other crimes can be committed with less risk. Of course law enforcement still has a lot of other tools to catch these criminals.

Some users of Anonymous Proxies are more benign though. Kids attempting to access MySpace from their school or employees accessing sites from work that the company has decided to block, or a Country is blocking web site critical of it’s government are a few examples. In addition there is the previously mentioned privacy concerns.

Companies of course can install Proxy Blocking Software, or take other measures to block these proxy sites. Unluckily with the number of sites popping up daily it’s nearly impossible to block them all.

The best thing companies can do is rely on Social Engineering within their company and put in place policies governing web surfing behavior. Or at the most draconian end of the spectrum, remove Internet access totally. The man power and software cost is too much other wise. Schools should simply remove computers off the Internet, and physically police (with a teacher) those machines that are still on the Internet. The problem is that people will always want to do what they are not allowed to do, computers have simply made that easier.

Anonymous Proxies are a very useful tool, but realistically only for a small portion of Internet users. Will it save lives? Yes. Will they continue to be abused and used to commit crimes? Yes. But then so is any other tool.

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