Whats the deal with Proxies

I used to be a webmaster and kept up to date with all the latest internet trends, but since I started doing radio it seems as though I have lost touch.

Whats the big deal with proxies? I know what they are and see there benefits but is there real money in this concept?

 

I always thought it was people doing hack testing, like a massive honeypot, so that hackers get the url, try to hack it and they can use it to patch whatever they want and sell the patch or use the exploit themselves

But i'm just guessing

 

Proxies are really hot right now, because there is a huge potential market. Proxies shield your IP and also shield the address that you are going to. Think browser in a browser. There are two groups of people who use proxies. Students who want to access Myspace, Facebook, and arcades while at school and people who want to look at, download, or view illegal stuff. The kids use it to bypass a website blocker, since it just looks like you're viewing proxyname.whatever and not myspace. They are really hot because they can be setup in 20 minutes with free scripts and cheaply advertised to give the webmaster truly automatic profit. I hope this answers your question.

 

But what does a person running those proxies get out of it, that totally baffles me

 

Money.
They can run adsense ads on their homepages and use adbrite, maybe bidvertiser and other PPC ads, on the proxified pages. They also don't cost a huge amount to host as long as you stay below a huge level of traffic.

 

You hit the bull's eye

 

Oh i think we're thinking of two different types of proxies, i was thinking of the ones on the proxy lists which are just an ip you type into your browser and use, what do they get out of it?

 

well in order to get the list you need to go to the site... if your talking about proxy lists for firefox and such

 

I mean places like this:

http://www.freeproxy.ru/download/lists/goodproxy.txt

Every one of those couldn't be paid could they? There is only 1 adsense box at the top so why are all those proxies running?

 

So if one wanted to explore the possiblities of running a proxy, where could you find these scripts? Not a list of proxy scripts, an actual proxy script?

 

Proxies are cool since they spread like fire and they make good revenue but you need reliable hosting to accommodate your increasing traffic since browsing speed is all what makes your proxy different than the other...