Free anonymizing proxies are available all over the Internet. There are programs that you install on your computer to access these proxies and there are proxies that you can access over a webpage. What these services do is secure your IP address so that you cannot be directly traced when you visit a website. These are actually very handy for most users. If you're only worried about one particular website getting your IP address - one that might be associated with adware, for example - using one of these anonymizing proxies is probably fine. There are some things that you should seriously consider about anonymizing services, however, before you use them for anything serious.
They're Software Specific
If you're using some of the more popular anonymizing services that you employ by installing software on your computer, there's an important caveat that you should be aware of. These services actually only protect traffic that comes from and to your browser. They are, in fact, specific to a particular piece of software on your computer. Consider the following example of how these services do not protect you.
If you installed one of these services on your computer and visited a website on your Internet browser with the anonymizing proxy turned on, your IP address would be up secured. It would be extremely difficult for anybody to trace your IP address back to you and, if they weren't doing it while you are actually on the site, it may well be impossible for them to do so. Imagine, however, that at the website you hook up to the address of an FTP server where you want to download software or other files. The anonymizing proxy would not protect the connection that you are making with your FTP server, in all likelihood. This means that your real IP address would show up plain as day on the logs for the FTP server.
A VPN network protects every type of traffic that originates from your computer. Whether you access a resource from your Internet browser, your FTP program, your e-mail client or anything else, that traffic will be routed through the VPN, it will be anonymized and it will be encrypted. In this regard, VPN services are orders of magnitude more secure.
They Can Fail
When you subscribe to a paid VPN service, there is a company behind the service that is responsible for making certain that you are getting the product that you're paying for. In some cases, free anonymizing services are worth every penny that you pay for them. If something goes wrong with the free service you're using, there's nobody to call, there's no tech support other than what you might find on forums and there's no way to actually test the software to make certain that it's working. With a VPN service, if you have doubts about whether it's working or not, you can simply call the service provider, have them test the software or take whatever other action is needed to make certain that you are, in fact, browsing securely.
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