Q&A: What type of proxy should I use?

Q: What type of proxy should I use? Are elite proxies the best?

A: There are different web sites that offer access to list of proxies (take a look to our recommended list).  

You will see that in the list there are different categories of proxies: 

• transparent 
• anonymous 
• high anonymous or elite proxies

The best proxies for hiding the ip address are the high anonymous proxies or elite proxies. This is because they offer the best anonymity on web. We will show you in the next paragraph how the high anonymous proxies or the elite proxies actually hide your ip address.  

When we are visiting a web site – without using any proxy server – the web servers that are hosting the web site that we access can retrieve (collect) the following information about us: our real ip address, if we are using a proxy server or not and the ip address of the proxy in use, the browser that we are using and the language that is currently used. If your IP address is revealed than other details about you can be revealed. Consider reading What is an IP address? and What Does Your IP Address Reveal About You?.

So in order to hide the ip address we should use proxies that do not reveal the fact that a proxy is used and in this way your ip address is protected. The only proxies that are able to do that are the high anonymous proxies or elite proxies.  

The transparent proxies are not to be used because they show that a proxy server is used and they told the web servers that you are using a proxy and your ip address. So transparent proxies are not to be used for hiding the IP address. They can be used for other purposes that we will discuss later on the blog.

The anonymous proxies can be used for hiding the IP address BUT some of the web servers might be able to detect the fact that a proxy is in use and in this way your IP address can be detected. So using anonymous proxies can be used for hiding the IP address but their accuracy is not 100%.