Proxy servers--how safe are they to use?

I am a member of a message board which just recently changed servers. The site owner said the new server offers better security. Since the changeover, I was only able to access their website and the board via a proxy server. There appeared to be some sort of blocking going on. I e-mailed the site owner and eventually she got her server to always allow my IP address. Since she did that, I was able to access the website and message board without problems, which indicates that it is her server that is engaged in blocking for whatever reason. However, I have a dynamic IP address, and it got changed, which does happen with dynamic IP's. Now I am, once again, blocked from the website and message board. The site owner is away on vacation right now. I have sent her information about my ISP and urged her to impress upon her server that my ISP is legit and safe, and to please stop blocking it, why not just allow all traffic from my ISP? Having to get the server to allow each individual IP address that I may get assigned is going to get rather tedious rather quickly, not to mention the fact that I am sure she does not want every potential visitor from my ISP to be blocked. Hopefully this will be solved when she gets back from vacation.

I had used a proxy server, http://www.freeproxyserver.ca/, but I have become reluctant to continue doing so because I wondered if there was any risk to my computer's security. A tech at my ISP said that since I am using a router, that would improve the safety of using the proxy server, but I am still wary of it.

I am still wondering just how safe it is to use a proxy server such as this one. As I said, I am using a router and the Windows firewall. I don't really know anything about servers.

Thanks for any responses.

 

Can anyone answer this? I miss my friends on that other message board and I'm too scared to use the proxy server to get there.

Thanks for any responses.

 

Surely someone here can answer this?

I have no malicious intentions here. It is my hope that when the owner of the message board in question returns from her vacation, she will educate the server owner a bit about my ISP, since I have given her all the information I can about my ISP to pass on to her server so that the server stops blocking it. I am hoping this all gets straightened out in about a week or so.

I merely wondered how safe proxy servers are to use. What sort of information would the person running the proxy server be able to gather about anyone going through that server?

 

It will not improve your security, but I doubt it will hurt it either. I'm not sure I would enter any sensitive details through it, however. You just never know.

If you are looking for increased security, and it *may* even resolve your problem, sign up and use www.opendns.com, and use their DNS servers. The extra services they provide you do require you to stay signed into them, but there is a setting to allow them to use their own proxies at times. There is no control over when, though.

 

Thanks, Adrynalyne,

The most I would ever enter while using that proxy server would be the user name & password for that message board. In fact, that's the only time I would ever use that proxy server. I really have no interest in or desire to use a proxy server or hide what IP address I'm coming from. I just want to be able to talk to my friends on the other message board, is all.

It's just that the new server of the message board I belong to seems to have some funny ideas regarding security, apparently. I really don't know what is going on or why they would feel the need to do ANY blocking at all, but I've taken that up with the owners of the message board.

I've heard of opendns.com, but not sure how that would work with my son's Xbox Live connection, and since that is currently working well, I don't want to rock the boat, so to speak.

Just curious, when I go to the freeproxyserver.ca site, would they 'see' the IP address that my ISP has assigned to me? As I understand it, I am behind a NAT router with my ISP. Or would the freeproxyserver.ca site see my router's IP? (Sorry if that's a dumb question. I would think that proxyserver.ca would 'see' the IP that my ISP has assigned to me.)

Again, thank you.

 

the proxy sees your true IP address, handed out by your ISP. Thats the same IP address assigned to your modem/router, on the WAN side. The LAN side IP addresses are not exposed.

 

And just to add a little, anything that you go to(like the message board) through the proxy will see the proxy, not your modems/your IP. But you probably already knew that.

One possibility concerning why it would be blocking you're IP is that someone else using the same service provider was blocked and they used a wild card IP ban/block. That means that they IP banned someone by telling their server to block their IP. As you know, a dynamic IP will change. However, each ISP is assigned a certain range of IP address that they can then assign to their customers. So, what they do is replace the last digits of the IP address of the person they are banning with an asterisk, or a "wild card." The server then bans anyone with those beginning digits, regardless of the last digits. This way it covers most or all of the IP address that person could potentially be assigned. Of course, you then have the chance of inadvertently blocking someone that you didn't want to. I'm not sure if this is the case that you're in or not, but it's possible.

 

Thanks, Adrynalyne.

Unbanable, thank you as well for the information. I wasn't aware that stuff like that happens. Maybe that's why the site owner originally told the server to allow my specific IP address, which at the time I thought was an odd way of handling it, although it solved the immediate problem for the time being. And here I am asking them to just find out the IP ranges my ISP uses and allow them all because I figured maybe they were blocking my ISP. Well, I guess I'll see what transpires next week, when the web site owner returns from vacation.