The need for increased online anonymity, privacy, and security is more significant than ever before. Whether you’re just an ordinary internet user or a fully-established business, being able to browse the web anonymously while staying safe and secure is one of the primary concerns of residential and commercial users.
Well, HTTP proxies are the best tools for ensuring your online activities remain private and anonymous online. Let’s talk about what HTTPS proxies are, how they work, how their functionalities can help increase your anonymity online, the advantages they can offer for your business, and do a SOCKS vs HTTP proxy comparison. Check here for a complete overview of the differences between SOCKS and HTTP proxies.
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What is the HTTPS protocol
HTTPS or hypertext transfer protocol secure is the secured version of HTTP. HTTP is the primary protocol used to interchange (send and receive) data between the internet user and the internet or between a web browser and the requested website. Due to its encrypted nature, HTTPS can significantly increase the anonymity and security of your data transfers.
It’s crucial when you need to transmit sensitive data, such as your business and financial information, email, health insurance, and bank account credentials of your employees, clients, and customers, and so on. Most modern websites require login information, and they rely on HTTPS protocol to keep those credentials secure.
Modern web browsers like Mozilla and Chrome mark differently websites that don’t use HTTPS than those that use the protocol. If you’re using Chrome, you can check how secure the websites you visit are by checking the URL bar. If the URL has a green padlock, the website is secure.
How it works
HTTPS protocol works by encrypting your communications using an encryption protocol called TLS or transport layer security. Although TLS used to be an SSL or secure sockets layer in the past, it was changed due to constantly evolving cybersecurity threats.
The new protocol is more secure and provides an additional layer of security to make your online traffic more anonymous and private. It does so by using an asymmetric public key infrastructure system that utilizes two different encryption keys:
- The public key – available to anyone, this key allows internet users to interact with the server securely. The only way to decrypt the information encrypted by the public key is with the private key.
- The private key – controlled by the owner, the private key is kept private on the owner’s website server and is used to decrypt the public key-encrypted information.
Now that you have some basic understanding of what the HTTPS protocol is and how it works, let’s see some of the main functionalities of HTTP proxies and their advantages.
Main functionalities of HTTP proxies
HTTP proxies allow businesses and regular internet users to access advanced HTTP website functions and protocols effectively, quickly, and securely. Any incoming traffic from TCP connections can be easily intercepted using HTTP proxies to scrape and extract data from restricted and blocked websites on the internet.
HTTP proxies route the user’s request to a web server using an HTTP protocol. A web server verifies the request and accepts it by responding with a link that gives the user access to the content they need.
HTTP proxies are high-end security tools for increasing your anonymity and privacy when browsing the web, especially when trying to scrape top-class websites of your main competitors. Most users use this type of proxies for price monitoring, competition tracking, and data extraction from competitors’ websites.
Their main functionalities include:
- Securing connections to HTTP web servers;
- Improving data security;
- Ensuring you only extract data you need for further use.
They also act as content filters between the user and the web, allowing the user to filter data, balance load, and achieve high-performance caching.
Advantages of these proxies
HTTP proxies offer three fantastic advantages. They can hide your real IP address to anonymize your connections by allowing you to choose from the pool of IP addresses, thus preventing target websites from obtaining your real IP.
An HTTP proxy is an excellent content filter that will make sure that no unauthorized files are stored on your device or server, thus preventing possible ransomware, spyware, and malware attacks. Finally, the biggest advantage of using HTTP proxies is the increased security of your extracted data.
In case you try to scrape data off of an insecure website, an HTTP proxy will protect your device by acting as a firewall. There is another type of proxy that is almost as effective as HTTP proxy – SOCKS proxy.
However, HTTP proxies win the SOCKS vs HTTP proxy battle simply because they are a better solution for scraping HTTP websites without being detected or blocked. SOCKS proxies can transfer data between clients and servers but can’t read traffic, while HTTP proxies can.
Conclusion
HTTP proxies are a perfect solution for web scraping practices and can help digital businesses gain a competitive advantage by gathering valuable information from various top-class websites. Since they are built on HTTP protocols, they offer a range of connection options and access to blocked content on the web and can work with HTTPS and HTTP webpages.
