Quote:
Originally Posted by gnilddif
Very helpful. Thanks. Can someone now explain what a proxy does please, and why it's there?
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A proxy handles a request on your behalf.
So your request for a page goes to the proxy. The proxy makes the request on your behalf, and returns the results to you.
Legitimate reasons why you might have a proxy, include security (the proxy is the exposed part of your network), or privacy (the proxy may filter out undesirable content, eg Privoxy), or speed (the proxy may cache content which is often requested).
In the case of a transparent proxy, the proxy is supposedly invisible to you. The proxy actively intercepts your network requests (you don't have the option of setting the proxy details in your browser for example) and applies security/filtering/caching measures.
Phorm used transparent proxies to capture and modify web traffic in their 2006/7 trials. In 2006 they inserted Javascript code into pages, in 2007 they captured pages for profiling.
In late 2006 I complained to Virgin that I had detected network performance characteristics which might suggest transparent proxying was going on (slow web page loading, nothing else affected). Other people complained of the same fault.
At the time Alex Brown explicitly
denied that Telewest were using transparent proxies (I've still got a copy of his statements).
Virgin now claim they
were using transparent proxies at that time, through til January 2007, but deny they were involved in Phorm trials.
Yet Roman Gaufmans CV mentions that he installed Phorm products in several ISPs.
So I have my own suspicions about what was going on. And it isn't the same as Virgin's, put it that way.