I think that there have been far too many people who have been victims of identity theft in the world. And one of the best sources for having your identity stolen is the use of proxy servers. Hackers too often pretend that they are someone else to get you to reveal information about yourself that you would not have given to a stranger under any other circumstance.
I didn’t just write this blog to harp on hackers who are misusing proxy servers for nefarious reasons though. I really wanted people to know that just because you are blocked from viewing a website by a DNS server that you can use a proxy server to get that information to you. The world is a less educated place when information is deliberately left out. While the United States has protected First Amendment Rights, not all countries are as lucky as we are and will find that their countries consider some content to be immoral or contain information that they don’t want their people to know. Think of North Korea. Do you think that their people would all let their dictatorship continue if the mass of people had any idea of what the true image of the world looked like? Well they might since it is what they know and fear, but at the same time, they could discover that there is so much knowledge that they are empowered to find more and fight to have it.
Then again, not all blocked sights necessary do need to be seen. Children should absolutely not have access to pornography websites. And I do not think that is blocking anyone’s freedom of knowledge. When they are grown they can do whatever freaky thing that are into, but exposing children to that kind of thing is not ok.
I was mortified when I discovered that there were countries like Iran who were blocking their citizens from receiving the news of the world. The actual news was being blocked. They did this to keep their population in the dark and show them the information that they want them to see instead of the information that is really there. This allows the countries to control their populations on a greater scale, telling them how the world works instead of letting people make up their own minds about it. And it if offensive. They are assuming that the population will not make an informed decision about the information or at least not make the decision that they want to use. And for that, I hope people learn to get around using the proxy servers to make it appear that that are someone else in another country. Education is everything and without it civilization will fail.
I hope that people walk away from this blog feeling better informed about what a proxy server is and how the internet actually works. Being informed about what you are using and sharing can only ensure that you remain protected and safe while you are online.