Proxy Setup
If you wish to use a proxy to browse the internet, you will need to set up your web browser with the proxy settings. There are several reasons for which you might want to use a proxy to browse the net. By using a proxy you can stay anonymous; Your real ip address will be hidden from the outside world. Thus you are basically safe from all most of the remote attacks which a hacker can perform on you if he knows your real ip address.
There are several free public proxy servers and some paid ones which allows you to use their proxy server to connect to the internet. So once you send a request to your ISP for www.yahoo.com, it goes to your proxy provider (say, abc) from your ISP and thus Yahoo will think that abc is requesting the page (which is actually you). Sometimes in offices and universities certain websites are blocked using proxy rule, so this can be bypassed if you use a public/paid proxy server instead of the one provided by system administrator. You might need to use a proxy if you would like to check your pages for badware.
The proxy setup is slightly different on different version and make of browsers. I will cover the two most popular browsers of today- Firefox & Internet Explorer.
How to set up proxy in Internet Explorer 6/7
Step 1 — On the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, click Internet Options, click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings.
Step 2 — Under Proxy server, click to select the Use a proxy server for your LAN check box.
Step 3 — In the Address box, type the IP address of the proxy server. (e.g. proxy.abc.com or 202.188.17.24)
Step 4 — In the Port box, type the port number that is used by the proxy server for client connections (by default, 8080).
Step 5 — You can click to select the Bypass proxy server for local addresses check box if you do not want the proxy server computer to be used when you connect to a computer on the local network.
Step 6 — Click OK to close the LAN Settings dialog box.
Step 7 — Click OK again to close the Internet Options dialog box.
How to set up proxy in Firefox
Step 1 — On the Tools menu in Firefox, click Options, click on connection settings.
Step 2 — On Connection Settings window check the “Manual Proxy Configuration”. On the HTTP Proxy box type the IP address of the proxy server. (e.g. proxy.abc.com or 202.188.17.24)
Step 3 — In the Port box, type the port number that is used by the proxy server for client connections (by default, 8080).
Step 4 — To use the proxy for all protocols, check the option - “Use the proxy server for all protocols“