Nothing that comes for free and can be given in unlimited amounts is ever trustworthy enough. That is the truth you might have heard many times. When we involve proxies into consideration of this truth, it may stand for the most part. Yet, there are some exceptions.
Transferring data can be a challenging task. Especially when you are dealing with large amounts of data and want to share it between you and your business partners.
Using proxies is instrumental for the improvement of your security. When data is transmitted to other devices that are beyond the reach of your company, securing this data is the first thing you want to do. If not secured, it can be exposed to third parties that shouldn’t have any access to it.
A proxy is a good solution for avoiding that. If you are looking for free proxies to do the job, you should be careful though. You might find them, but you must do thorough research and not just carelessly pick the ones that sound good based on their provider’s promises.
Why use a proxy for a data transfer?
Proxies are intermediary servers between the user and the internet. They provide anonymous access to the internet where all your requests and responses are routed through a proxy server with an altered IP address, leaving your IP address disguised.
In terms of data transfer, a proxy can provide the necessary encryption of your data and overall activity, thus making it protected from external exposure or unwanted malware attacks.
An encrypted proxy blocks any external access to your activity. Even your Internet Service Provider can’t see what you are doing and can’t affect you if you are doing something that might seem suspicious in the face of government surveillance.
Many businesses use virtual private networks (VPNs) within their organizations to carry out this task. However, they route all the traffic, including all background activity, and are not designed for too many employees to be working at the same time.
It can cost more time and make more data available to exposure. Although it provides encryption, in case of data transfer, if something goes wrong, not only transferred data can be compromised, but a lot more, namely, everything that a company is doing through that VPN.
Proxies are going the opposite route. Only relevant activity is routed through their servers. It makes the connection faster, and less data is being exposed to the server. It provides more safety that is enhanced by the fact that a limited amount of your actions and your data is involved in the entire process.
Sometimes proxy servers, especially of the datacenter type, are used for improving overall network performance. Compared to proxies with residential IP addresses, they have much greater internet speeds, allowing for faster data operations. That’s also important when huge loads of data are being transferred and can take a lot of time.
Nevertheless, using free proxies for data transfer might pose certain risks that are worth considering.
Risk factors
The main things you must avoid when choosing a free proxy provider are these:
- Vague reputation of a proxy provider,
- Poor encryption or none of it,
- Additional HTTPS modifications.
As you might have noticed, most free proxies are run by volunteers. Their reasons for doing that may vary. While some volunteers are doing this as charity work for providing better security, others might just hide their real interests of extracting your private data through free proxies that they are providing to you.
Free proxies can be either encrypted (HTTPS) or unencrypted (HTTP). Since using proxies for transferring data is sensible for security first, you must avoid using proxies that don’t use encryption. And most free proxies are exactly like that.
One of the main concerns about free proxies is that a great number of them modify HTTPS and insert certain ads or even malware into your browsing. It can compromise your data when you are transferring it and using untrustworthy proxies.
Finding a trustworthy proxy provider
It all comes down to the reputation of a provider. It’s important in general, but even more so when you are looking for free proxies. Choosing a trustworthy proxy provider is a task that you should care deeply about.
It’s obvious that you must look for a proxy that uses encryption and has no additional modification. But how to recognize if a provider is trustworthy?
It mainly depends on what is their main income source. The only way to get a free proxy from a reliable provider is to find such a provider that makes their business in selling a first-class service. Free proxies must be just an addition to their main product.
If they are providing paid proxies, they will certainly not risk their reputation with unsafe proxies that can be given for free and end up compromising the whole company.
Besides, the proxy provider can get blamed for any illegal activity done by their users. That can hurt them really bad, and it’s not worth taking the risk.
For this reason, the trust must be mutual between the provider and the user. Again, to tell a trustworthy provider and not a reliable one apart, you must look if a company that provides proxies for free is also doing that for money as their main source of business and giving free proxies just as a part of their bigger activity.
If you found one, there is a good chance that it’s the provider you were looking for.
Summing-up
Proxies can be used for encrypting your data transferring process and blocking third parties from any access to it. If you want the highest level of security, you should choose paid services over free. However, if you find a reliable proxy provider, namely, the one that also provides good proxies for money, you can use their free proxies for the discussed matter.
