Choosing Between A Proxy And A Vpn

By Author: Vikram Kuamr
Total Articles: 2912
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Of the various methods of disguising your true location and identity on the internet, there are 2 options that are utilized more than most and which a greater proportion of people know about. The first is VPN, which sites like Witopia provide, and the other is a proxy, which include providers like Hidemyass.

Both of these services do 2 main things. The first is hiding your true location, and this means that it prevents the computers that you connect to from detecting your actual geographic location. For example, if you are actually sitting and using your computer at your desk in Australia or Asia, but your VPN or proxy provider has an address in the United States, then the computers or websites that you are connecting to will believe that you are actually in the United States. The other thing that they do is disguise your identity. This does not refer to your actual personal identity, but the identity of your computer. Each computer has a unique electronic identity, in the form of an IP address, and VPNs and proxies help to mask that identity, ensuring that hackers, malicious software, and websites are unable to determine ...
... the true identity of your computer and, for example, tag your account to it.

One of the advantage that proxies have over VPNs is that while a VPN is usually a paid subscription service, many websites offer proxy services for free. While this might sound too good to be true, there is also a downside. The methods by which VPNs and proxies disguise your identity and location differ somewhat, with the most obvious difference being that utilizing a VPN is like joining a network whereas using a proxy is like sending your connection through a middleman. Due to the nature of the middleman, with so many users connecting through the same proxy service, proxies tend to work much more slowly than VPNs. However, the fact that proxies are free can mean the difference for some people, and the speed obtained from proxies can be sufficient, depending on the type of online activity that you plan to engage in.

If you plan on visiting a website that happens to be blocked in your country, for example, then a proxy service should be sufficient for you to surf without becoming frustrated with the lower speed. If you are attempting to stream a movie, however, then you might encounter some difficulty, especially if the movie is in a high quality format. You might find yourself having to wait several hours for the movie to load sufficiently for you to watch it without having to stop repeatedly while it loads, or you might have to resign yourself to low quality video, which certainly reduces the enjoyment of the viewing experience.

VPNs, on the other hand, are much faster but also entail a subscription fee. If you plan to watch many movies through the service, however, then a VPN provider like Witopia should definitely be your choice. Otherwise, a proxy should be sufficient for your needs, while saving you money at the same time.

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Many people today use Proxy like Hidemyass and VPNs like Witopia to get their connections through to media streaming services like Netflix, suffering limited speed and high subscription rates. The DNS Direct Connection service from UnoTelly, on the other hand, is a fast and affordable service that will truly get you value for your money.