Anonymous web proxy

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An anonymous web proxy (CGI proxy, HTTP proxy) is designed to bypass proxy restrictions through a web interface. Web proxies hide users identity from the sites they visit, keep cookies at their site, and delete them after each session and selectively remove JavaScript, Java, etc. The server then communicates with the webpage, then communicates with visitor browser.

During an HTTP connection, the IP address of the client machine is necessarily transmitted in order to get the information back. This allows an HTTP server to positively identify the source of the web request. An anonymous web proxy serves as an intermediate third-party in the communication to the ultimate destination HTTP server. No direct communication occurs between the client and the destination server, therefore it appears as if the HTTP request originated from the intermediate proxy server. The only way to trace the connection to the originating client would be to access the logs on the anonymous web proxy (if it keeps any).

Another common use of anonymous web proxies is to access sites which are normally blocked by your upstream ISP. For instance, web proxies are often used by people in China to access sites which have been censored by their government ^[1]