The Problems with Public Proxy Server

So you have found a nice free proxy server. Great! Well perhaps not!

There are many well known problems with free public proxy servers. Now it is true there are generally quite easy to find (especially if you know what you're looking) however the disadvantages can lead to an enormous waste of your time, and compromise your security and identity.

The biggest problem with public proxy servers they just are not reliable. Of course the principal reason for this is because so many people can use them, after all they are free proxy servers! With somebody people using them at the same time it's very easy for the server to get overloaded, thus leaving you with an extremely slow Internet connection. Even if you're lucky and managed to find a proxy server with very few users there is a strong chance that one of those few users is abusing it. Many Internet marketing packages include scrapers to find free proxy servers, packages such as scrapeboxand Xrumer need constant supply of proxies to operate. Just one extra user can easily swamp a single proxy. The fact that software packages such as Xrumer and scrapebox are using these proxies to spam the Internet means they are often blacklisted and can't be used for many websites.

Another major disadvantage of any public proxy server, and really the biggest disadvantage of all, is that they generally do not provide true anonymity at all. The reason for this is because so many public free proxy servers are actually run by hackers and spammers, or various other organisations determined to obtain your details. these people can see all the traffic that goes through their proxy server, and can therefore extract any information from that they require.

So if you have any concern for your online privacy you will not even consider using a free proxy server, and will instead subscribe to a paid service from a reputable company such as Identity Cloaker.

Import Books Cheaply for Expats

Something a bit different today, saving money on books! If you live in the USA or the UK then you can pretty much ignore this post as you will have access to the best discount books anyway.

However for the other 90%+ of the world population this could save you some serious money by taking advantage of price discrepancies between different countries.

For the sake of example I shall use one of my daughters favourite stories "The Terrible Plop" by Ursula Dubosarky, at the time of writing this book could be ordered online and delivered to a house in Australia for:

So instantly we have an almost $10 saving on the book, remember this includes postage!

BUT what if we visit those two Book Depository sites using a local IP address? Well then things get even cheaper!

Now our savings are OVER $10 from the original local book stores price, a total saving of over 50%! Oh and yes this price still INCLUDES DELIVERY!

Now of course you are going to need to get a UK and US IP address to take and while you could do this for free with an open proxy I implore you not to do this! Why? Well you are making a purchase here and you should never ever send your payment details via an open proxy, many such free proxies are purposely built just to harvest payment details from people who use them. To be secure you need to use a private proxy service such as our ever favourite Identity Cloaker, which gives you not only UK and US servers but multiple servers all around the world!

Do always remember to check both the UK and US sites, more often than not the US one is the cheaper of the two.

For those who of you who want to get this great book just click below, though remember to use a UK IP address from Identity Cloaker if you want it for the best possible price!

Change Your IP = Save Money

All IPs are not treated the same, the geographic location of your IP address can dictate what you see on a Website, and subsequently what you pay for online good and services. Using Identity Cloaker software you can make it appear that you are located elsewhere in the world, and as such take advantage of local offer that normally you would be excluded from. Recently I purchased a round the world cruise, and saved myself over 13% by booking it through a UK IP address rather than an Australian one.

You see it works like this, visit www.pocruises.com and attempt to make a booking, unless you are in the UK you will be forwarded to the details of your countries booking agents. You can contact them and get prices, but you will find they are much higher in general than the advertised prices on the P&O Website.

How To Book A Cheap P&O Cruise Outside the UK

So what is stopping you getting those prices? Quite simply P&O know you are outside the UK. To get those lovely UK prices there are a few steps you will need, this process is the same for almost all sites you might want to deal with be they in the USA, UK or just about anywhere else there is a proxy available for. Now in the case of P&O you will also need a UK telephone number and an address, in these days of e-tickets you would actually get away without the address to some extent but it's not hard to get one.

For a UK telephone number try voiptalk.org, or of course you could try getting a UK number from Skype.

For a UK address search Google.co.uk for "virtual office", and select somebody who does mail forwarding.

If you want to do this for a USA based company its much easier as there are many companies in the USA offering mailing addresses to the online world.

Now you probably need to clear your cookies as sites like P&O log your details the first time you visit, check Google for the free program CCleaner and run this to clear just about ever element of your online history.

Now fire up Identity Cloaker and select the country you need, in our case the UK, then visit the site. You will now find the online ordering system works fine, use your UK address and telephone number and hey presto you got your cruise.

Of course for cheap items this is hardly worth bothering with, but in this case we are talking about saving several thousand dollars. With regards to cruises some of the US companies will only sell to those with a US passport, and that's a little harder to get around!