Cyber Security:

Proxy Servers

Proxies are 'like cousins' to VPNs.

Like a VPN, they can reroute your web traffic to make it appear as if it is coming from somewhere else, hiding your real IP address in the process.

Proxies work by "transporting your traffic between your client machine and a proxy server by encapsulating it in some kind of outer header." Like a VPN, a proxy sends your web traffic to the proxy server, which then sends it back out onto the internet.

However, with most VPN services the data is encrypted by default and ensures the data-packets are authenticated.

Proxies using SOCKS and HTTP protocols do not encrypt user traffic. SSL or HTTPS proxies, but not HTTP proxies that forward to HTTPS, do encrypt user traffic.

Each application requires its own proxy connection. In practical terms, that means that the proxy connection to handle your browser traffic won't work for another application on your machine. This leaves lots of opportunities for web traffic to leave your machine outside the proxy connection.