is proxy using legal

A proxy is a server that reroutes your web traffic through itself. To understand how they work you need to know a little bit about HTTP. Basically, when you want to view a webpage, you send what is called an HTTP request to the server. The server is the remote computer that has the resource you are requesting, which can be an HTML page, and image, a script, or some other kind of file. The request might start like this if you were visiting mylot.com: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: mylot.com The request would probably go on to describe the type of borwser you are using and various other technical detalis, but it could stop here and you'd get your page. Along with the request goes the IP address of your computer, which the server would send the information back to. Ordinarily you would send this right to the sever you want the page from, but a proxy goes in between to protect your anonymity. You send the proxy your request, it relays it to the server, the server replies to the proxy, and the proxy sends you your page. This is why proxies can be quite a bit slower than using your regular internet connection. There are a bunch of different types of proxy out there. Your ISP has a proxy that caches static, commonly visited pages (keeps a copy stored) so it can send them to you faster. There are also CGI/script proxies, which are the most common you would know you are coming into contact with. These take the URL you type into the box and retrieve a web page for you, while hiding your IP address from the server. These aren't strictly illegal, but if you apply for free or paid web hosting you will often get a warning that proxies are strictly prohibited. This is because they eat up a lot of bandwidth without actually contributing content to the web.

You would want to use a proxy server when you need to mask your IP or your server disallows access to certain websites. You do not need to download anything, but go to a website that provides proxy and access the website you want from its address bar. I use vtunnel.com, it seems user friendly and I have never had a problem accessing sites via this proxy server. I hope this has helped, if you have any further questions please let me know.