#  >  > Computers Can Be Fun >  >  > Computer News >  >  Using a Proxy Tutorial

## dirtydog

*Using a Proxy Tutorial - Getting the BBC whilst abroad*

In some countrys including Thailand it is illegal to use a proxy server, so please stick to whatever the laws maybe in your country you are in, you could be stealing somebodies bandwidth.

There are many reasons to use a proxy and in some countries most proxy servers are banned, ie a proxy server that is basically a website set up to provide you with a IP to hide your activity so it is quite easy for governments or ministries to find and block them, ie domains like hidemyass.com would generally be blocked in most middle east countries to stop the local populace looking at porn sites and getting erotic thoughts.

What an anonymous proxy will do is put you into the country that it is based in, ie if you needed to be in the USA to use your ebay account and you was actually in Thailand then that would be a good reason to use a proxy, another would be if you told your wife you was popping over to Spain for a week to see your aging parents when infact you were going to Pattaya for a weekend of partying with wild Soi Yodsak girls, when you email her your country IP will be in the header, if she knows how to read this she is going to know that your not at your aging parents bedside but infact in Thailand.
Or for many expats a good reason for a working UK proxy is of course being able to view the BBC.

First thing to do so you don't mess up everything is to download a new browser, for this example we shall use opera browser as it is about the best but isn't too popular, you can download it *here*.

Now you need a proxy, you can do this a few ways, google something along the lines of "Free Anonymous Proxy" or "Proxy Forum" or even go *here*, or you can download something along the lines of *Forum Proxy Leecher*, you will also find this on the torrent sites if you aren't willing to pay for it, basically all it does is run through a load of proxy forums and test any proxies that have been submitted and gives you a list of working proxies.

So lets get this proxy working, first off click on "Tools", scroll down and click on "Preferences", the window pictured below will open and you want to click on "Advanced" then click on "Network".


See that button which says "Proxy Servers", well thats the one you want to click, on clicking that you will get this window.


Now rather than use a proxy leecher which is way over the top for most people as you don't need 250,000 working proxies unless your doing something totally illegal and that you will probably spend the rest of your life in jail for I went to Samair.ru, at this moment they have 250 working proxies from all over the world, here's a snapshot, I'm going to take the bottom one and pretend I am in the UK, ie if you want to watch the BBC then this would be a good one to use if it is fast enough.


Now those numbers above consist of the IP and the port number you need to use, just check the "HTTP" box, copy and paste the first 4 blocks of numbers into the first box and then enter the port number into the second box, the colon thingy just dump but the full stops or periods you need in the first 4 blocks of numbers, same as in this photo, then click "OK".


Now to see if it works and is anonymous, there are plenty of places to check your ip and what country they think you maybe in, this one for now is quite good *here*.


 
 Seems I am in the UK at Leamington Spa at a car phone place, bet they get to watch the BBC  :Smile: 


A quick blurb from Forum Proxy Leecher website.

*Introduction*

Forum Proxy Leecher (FPL) is an intelligent proxy leecher that can extract proxies from various proxy sites and proxy forums even if the proxies are in the attachment.

FPL proxy tester module (Bleach) is specially designed for huge list. It can extract the unique proxies from a huge file and rapidly classify them into 3 levels according to their anonymity.


And a quick blurb from samair.ru

*What is Proxy Server?*

A proxy server is a machine that sits between the proxy users and the servers that they need access to. When a proxy user requests a certain remote resource using a URL, the proxy server receives this request and fetches the resource to fulfill the client’s request. This process enables the proxy server to store the requested content in a cache. Any new request that asks for information already in the cache no longer needs to be serviced by fetching it from the remote server. Instead, the new request is serviced from the cached data. In typical proxy scenarios, the purpose of a proxy server is to fetch the requested resource from the remote server, return it to the requesting user, and cache it in local drives. 
What is an anonymous proxy server?

Anonymous proxy does not transfer the information about the IP-address of its user, and thus effectively hide the information about you and your surfing interests. In addition, some proxies (the so-called elite proxies) can also hide the fact that a user surfing through a proxy server. So there are two types of anonymous proxies (see below).

Anonymous Proxy server does not send HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR variable to host, this improves privacy since your IP address cannot be logged.

Elite proxy (high anonymity) does not send HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_VIA and HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION variables. Host doesn't even know you are using proxy server and of course it doesn't know your IP address.

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## dirtydog

How to set up a proxy using internet explorer, you really shouldn't be using internet explorer as that is the most likely browser for hijackers etc to work on, anyway here is how to set up a proxy on it.

Click "Tools" on the far top right, scroll down to the bottom and click "Internet Options", the window below will open and then click on the "Connections" tab.


 
Click on the "Settings" button, check the "use a proxy server for this connection" box, put your proxy in, put the port number in and away you go.

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## CaptainNemo

Have you ever heard of anyone being busted for using proxy in Thailand?

When you say "view the bbc", you mean watch iplayer?!
Are you talking about downloading programmes to watch later rather than delayed streaming?

I don't think proxies always support all formats of online video viewing, and set limits around the 4mb range don't they?

You could reduce the screen resolution to get decent picture size, but it can be a bit of a choppy image.

I'd look at trying setting up a dedicated Mythbuntu machine for this lark if security was a worry; connect it to another (file server) box behind a decent hw firewalled router on constant 24/7 low bit rate torrent download from friendly online sources for building up a decent amount of stuff to watch... (assuming the lecky bill isn't too bad).

(I would have thought the bulk BBC websites are no trouble in most parts of SEAsia with a decent connection; I suppose it's all the additional multimedia they are whacking on their new AJAX site that might start becoming an issue).

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## dirtydog

> Have you ever heard of anyone being busted for using proxy in Thailand?


Not yet.



> When you say "view the bbc", you mean watch iplayer?!


It's pretty irrelevent, I am using BBC as an example, ie content that you cannot view due to the country you are in, if your in Saudi and want to view your favoutite bukkake site you will find it is most likely blocked.



> I don't think proxies always support all formats of online video viewing, and set limits around the 4mb range don't they?


The majority of these proxies the owners do not know they are open and being used by others, normally a server would password protect their proxy, it is their bandwidth that is being stolen, these aren't sites set up to be used by the public as proxy servers.

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## Spin

Your Leamington proxy up there is just about as dead as dead can get :Smile:

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## dirtydog

If you go to the proxy site you will find brand new ones that are constantly updated, how long would you let people use your bandwidth after you found out about it?

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## Spin

> how long would you let people use your bandwidth after you found out about it?


I didn't think people were that bothered about bandwidth?, take TD for example, you got loads of spastics on here burning up your bandwidth and you seem pretty relaxed about it :Smile:

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## dirtydog

^Obviously Mr Carphone from Leamington Spa doesn't want those _spastics_ using his bandwidth  :Smile:

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## Spin

So how does that website find the proxies, and is it possible to find your own, and keep it to oneself, so you don't have to change it all the time?

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## dirtydog

That would be another thread, it's quite involved, you need to download some port scanner software.

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## dirtydog

Whilst we are on the subject of proxies might as well quickly go into Proxy Chaining, not sure if anybody bothers using this, all it involves is going through a load of different servers to get where you want to be but you choose the route, obviously the more you choose the slower and more complex it gets and more chance of not even getting through to where you want to go, here is a quick proxy chain.
Now I have stuck 156.17.10.51:3128 into my browser which puts me in Poland of all places, now lets look at the url I have in my browser.
218.202.1.180:80/http://www.webwarper.net/ww/~av/teakdoor.com/
You can copy and paste it into your browser to try it, not sure how long the Chinese one will work for, or you could go for the whole lot.
156.17.10.51:3128/218.202.1.180:80/http://www.webwarper.net/ww/~av/teakdoor.com/

This first one 218.202.1.180:80 puts me in China, but going to webwarper puts me in Germany, and at the end we got teakdoor.

So we got a server in Poland that knows or thinks I am in Thailand, we got a server in China that knows I am in Poland, we got a server in Germany that knows I am in China, and we got teakdoor which is wondering what the hell I am doing in Germany  :Sad:  easy aint it  :Smile:

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## Spin

There an add-on for Firefox called foxy proxy that allows allocating urls to different proxies.
You can set it so that when you open say, bbc it uses a proxy that puts you in UK and when you open Thaivisa, it puts you in thailand. Quite handy.

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## dirtydog

^Thats just modern day rubbish, can't beat the old traditional ways of doing things, also I bet all that modern day crap don't do proxy chaining does it..

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## dirtydog

Plus if you understand how the old way works then you will understand how they all work, the new ways seem to hide the workings so people don't know how to use them without downloading somebody elses software, or heaven forbid, paying for software  :Sad: 

Also don't forget, there is nothing stopping you bookmarking say this url http://www.webwarper.net/ww/~av/teakdoor.com/ which will connect you to td through Germany, or any other variation you want, and that way you have control of your routing rather than your browser add on having control of the route you take.

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## harrybarracuda

Two words:

Hotspot Shield

You can download it from various places, and you can turn it on and off when you need it. And it's free.

Terminates in the  US though, I think, so not sure it would get you round the Beeb problem.

The problem with most proxies, or alternatives like Tor, is that they are too darned slow.

 :deadhorsebig:

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## dirtydog

> Terminates in the US though


The BBC is in the UK and serves people in the UK, the idea of using a proxy is so *you* can choose the route you want to take.

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## Professorfart

I managed to get through to the Beeb, but when I tried to listen to the football which is usually blocked, in the player it said that I had to enable Javascript.

I looked as best I could but as far as I could tell my javascript was on.

Any ideas?

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## dirtydog

Some proxies java is disabled, try a new proxy.

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## Professorfart

Cheers DD. Got one that works.

Whats the 'shelf life' on the average proxy?

Do I have to change it daily? Weekly?

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## dirtydog

If you don't share it they can last for months, if you got it from a proxy site depends how popular it gets.

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## dirtydog

Found another way of watching the BBC and other UK stations using Zattoo - watch online TV you need a proxy from one of the following countries though, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, or the UK.
Also this site is quite interesting for UK tv TV Guide UK TV Listings - UK's No 1 TV Listing site for Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, Freesat & Tiscali TV

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## dirtydog

OK for the thickoes a video tutorial on using a proxy.

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