5 Reasons Why You Should Stop Using Free Proxies And Start Looking For Alternatives

“If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

Every day millions of people around the world use free proxy services to hide their location, improve online security or access websites that aren’t available in their country. It’s easy to think that everything on the internet is free to use but what we tend to forget is that there is always someone who is paying for online services, in some way or another. When you use a free proxy server, you’re essentially surrendering your own IP address to the proxy server for the privilege of using their IP address. This makes you “anonymous” to the websites you’re visiting but not to the proxy server. Here are 5 reasons why should stop using free proxies and start looking for alternatives.

1. Most free proxy servers don’t pass security tests

It has been found that most free proxy servers don’t allow HTTPS connection, which is a huge security problem. HTTPS is a protocol for securing the communication between two systems which encrypts and decrypts user page requests as well as the pages that are returned by the Web server. The lack of HTTPS means your connection to the server is not encrypted, so someone monitoring the connection could easily see the data you’re sending as it travels through the network. This makes free proxy services a very poor choice for doing anything that requires privacy, such as entering your login details into a website.

2. Your connection can be monitored

The reason why free proxy websites avoid using HTTPS is that they might want to monitor your activities themselves.

When you use a free proxy website, you’re trusting the owners and expecting quality service for free. But do you know the real intentions behind offering free proxy server? There’s no way to know what the server owners installed on their hardware to monitor you, so before trying it, think if it worth taking the risk.

3. It can steal cookies

When you log into a server, your computer creates a small file called a cookie. This is a very useful feature because it stores your login data, so you don’t have to keep logging in every time you visit the site. However, when a proxy server is between you and the website, there’s a chance the owners of the server can steal the cookies. They could use them to impersonate you online and make a lot of damage. If you visited very sensitive sites, you might be in big trouble.

4. A free proxy server can contain malware

By trusting your connection to a free proxy server, you’re hoping that it won’t abuse the connection to infect your device. However, a free proxy server can infect your machine accidentally. Due to their service being free, some owners rely on ad revenue. They inject advertisements into the content and hope that you’ll click them and help pay for the server. Unfortunately, if they aren’t diligent, scammers take advantage of it and show ads laced with malware. This type of advertising is known as malvertising. The owners likely won’t even know this is happening until your computer has been infected.

5. Poor service

After you take the risk of using free proxies, you’ll probably find it not worth the risk. Due to lack of funding and because so many other people are using them, free proxies are typically very slow. You may find the most proxies of certain countries are either blocked or not working. Also, all of these free proxy providers do not have 24/7 customer support so they will not be able to help you in any case.

If you really have to use free proxies, never submit any personal information across it. It’s best to imagine a hacker reading every piece of information you send over a free proxy server. If this makes you uneasy about using the server, it’s best to stay well away!