[LINK] RFI: Practicalities of Open/ Anonymous Proxies

[Roger Clarke]

I've always intended to test out open / anonymous proxies.

(As a 20-year Internet player, and having been active in security and 
privacy rather longer than that, it's embarrassing that I've never 
got around to doing so).

A malfunction in the internal network of my ADSL provider (TPG) 
blocked traffic from my IP-address to my mailbox (which is with a 
different ISP), for about 32 hours.

So I had the motivation to find a proxy that would enable me to 
circumvent the malfunction.  (Almost all of my traffic was getting 
through, so in principle any proxy-server would be likely to get 
around the blockage).

I tried a dozen proxies, but all failed.

I was going to:  https://www.MYDOMAIN/webmail

The reasons proxies failed appeared to be varied, and to include:
-   SSL not supported
-   forms not supported (i.e. HTTP POST method declined)
-   payment needed using Paypal (I don't)
-   payment required first, without the ability to test it, and hence
     know in advance whether it was going to work or not
-   invalid site cert (I've never bothered getting one, because I know
     how worthless certs are, and it's my own site anyway)

Reasons to use an open proxy include:
-   to avoid disclosing one's network location to the target node
-   to appear to the target node be in a particular network region
     (or geographical region, if the target believes IP-based geo-loc)
-   to circumvent a blockage based on IP-address

There must be lots of reasons to want to use https, and to use forms 
(fetching webmail, logging into accounts, doing eCommerce, ...).

Can anyone shed any light on why the first dozen I went to are 
useless for such a mainstream purpose?  Thanks for any leads!

[I'm on Mac OSX 10.4.11, old Safari, old Firefox.  Are they unable or 
unwilling to support old browsers perhaps?]


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University