Is anonymising with HTTPproxies reliable ?

I always ask my self about HTTP proxies wich are suggested freely online, are they reliable or not? do they save personal informations ? if yes for the benefit of whom ?

 

I've used HTTP and HTTPS proxies from several sources, free and paid. I'm not sure what you mean by "reliable", but generally they're not very. They tend to get maxed out, especially the free ones, and refuse connections. And unless you check with a testing website that shows request headers, you can't be sure that they're "anonymous" (don't report your IP address as referrer).

You never know who's logging what for whom

 

@mirimir
I mean by reliable two things, first: are they really anonnymous- obviously I check that via other websites, but I'm not sure if that is sufficient, a exemple of test :http://ip.cc/anonymity-test.php -, second: for what sake they are suggested freely ?
Indeed free ones are very slow and even they fail to connect sometimes.

 

That seems to be a good test site for proxies. Unless it's lying, it's reporting what you need to know.

That's hard to know. Sometimes it's just for the public good, in the cypherpunks tradition. Sometimes it's self-promotion, as with HideMyAss. And maybe some are collecting data

Yes, that is a problem. Best is getting fresh proxy lists, and using the newest ones. Or you can pay for private proxies. Some SEO proxy providers give you a management interface.

 

@mirimir
Great advantage of HTTP proxies : some times we run into universities proxies and we get paid stuff freely.
Tools I used to seek for proxies: proxyhunter, then I resolve results with fastresolver to filter universities severs.

 

That's a good point. Clever Academic publishers charging 30 USD per article is obscene

 

@mirimir
But security and risks are uncertain !

 

No free lunch