What are proxies? You may have heard this through your internet provider but don’t know what it means.
Do you know that each time you visit a site or connect with someone over a social media channel, your internet provider gives your computer address or IP address to the site or the person you’re connecting with? It seems that your safety is at risk, right? This is where proxies can be used.
Let’s first find out why you were at risk when you used the internet because of your IP address.
Your IP address states your location. It can tell even your street name.
Your IP address reveals your identification. It can tell your name and address because the internet connection is billed to you or someone.
Some sites can block you from accessing their content through your IP address.
Proxy servers
If you are wondering how you can get away with the risks related to public IP, proxy servers, proxy service, or a proxy can help. If you are going to check the dictionary, it’s going to reveal that proxy means “substitute.”
Proxies allow users to surf or go online without revealing the IP address. It can hide your IP address identity.
It acts as a gateway between you and the internet. It divides end users and the sites they browse. Different proxy servers offer different security, functionality, and privacy.
Functions of Proxies:
To control the internet use of employees and children
You can use a proxy if you want to check or track how your employees or your kids use the internet. For example, you want to monitor if your employees are accessing the internet during office hours, you can block them from these sites and redirect them to a page saying they aren’t allowed to do so.
Through a server, they can track how much time you are devoting to cyberloafing and not working. Even they don’t block sites, and they can check all web requests through the tool.
For privacy reasons
As already mentioned, proxies can protect your IP address from others. In this case, you can use the internet without revealing your address. You can browse more privately.
Proxy servers can alter the IP address and other information that can identify the user. When this happens, the destination server wouldn’t know who made the request.
It enhances your security.
Aside from privacy, servers can enhance your security. You can use it to encrypt your web requests to get away from sites or individuals who want to know your transactions. You are also protected from malware sites.
It improves speeds and saves bandwidth.
Good proxies can provide better overall network performance. It caches popular sites to save bandwidth and improve the performance of the network.
You can access blocked resources.
Proxies can permit users to evade content restrictions made by the government or companies. For example, if you want to watch a particular Football game online during office hours, you can use a proxy to access it. It can show that you are in Las Vegas when you are actually in New York.
Risks Associated with Proxies
Although proxies are meant to protect your privacy and security, some risks come with it.
The use of free proxies
The adage “You get what you pay for” is true when using any tools online. It is risky to use a no-cost proxy because you are not secured with your privacy.
These free software usually don’t have back-end hardware or encryption. You’re likely to encounter an issue such as data security and performance issues. Be careful because there are free servers that are just spying on your credit card information.
No encryption
Proxies must offer encryption. If not, don’t use a proxy at all. Without encryption, any site or individual can still obtain your username, passwords, account information, credit card numbers, and other confidential data. Make sure that you are choosing a proxy with full encryption.
It has your browsing history log.
When you use proxies, your web request an IP address can be encrypted. You need to know if it saves your data or how they retain the information or what policies they apply.
There are plenty of proxies online. Some are free to use while other services ask for a fee.
Storm Proxies
Founded in 2016, Storm Proxies is one of the paid proxy servers available in the market today. It offers rotating, residential, and dedicated proxies.
Features of Storm Proxies:
High speed and performance - It has 1 GB network optimized for high performance and multi-threaded tools.
Automatic and instant delivery - After paying the plan, you get access to the service. You don’t have to wait to set up the proxies or activate your account.
Unlimited bandwidth - You can experience unlimited bandwidth. You don’t have to pay extra for that.
2-Day Money-Back Guarantee - The site offers a 2-day money-back guarantee if a client isn’t satisfied with the service or they opt to move on with a different proxy. They provide refunds within 48 hours of purchase. It gives the clients a time to think if it is the right proxy for them without obliging them to tie up with them right away.
Premium Support 24 / 7 - They can be reached through email 24/ 7.
Highly Anonymous - The site offers full privacy and security of your IP address. It uses a unique technology that hides your identity.
It offers:
Backconnect Rotating Proxies
It changes the IP on each HTTP request automatically or every 3 or 15 minutes. It is perfect for tasks that need a large of varied IPs such as traffic bots, bulk accounts registration, SEO tools, scraping sites, tickets, and sneaker sites.
Private Dedicated Proxies
This is a premium private dedicated proxy. It is ideal for tasks that require high-speed fixed IP addresses.
Reviews About Storm Proxies:
Hide IP Proxy, and a review platform gave Storm Proxies a general rating of 8.9 based on five reviews. The rating is based on the Expert score of 9.5 and the User’s score of 8.2.
Based on reviews, Storm Proxies has the following advantages over the other proxies in the market:
It offers a wide range of plans to choose from.
It provides unlimited bandwidth.
It offers a large number of residential proxies.
It provides Ticketmaster proxies, social media proxies, and dedicated sneaker proxies.
High-speed.
On the other hand, they find the site lacking in a free trial, no SOCKS Proxies available, and no regular shared proxies available.
This is how the review platform summarized the features that Storm Proxies offer:
Feature
Storm Proxies
Proxy types - Rotating backconnect proxies, Private dedicated proxies, Sneaker proxies, Ticketmaster & tickets sites proxies, Social sites proxies
Proxy location - USA, European Union, and other Worldwide areas.
Proxy client - Proxy bots, manual configuration, browser extensions, programmatically.
IP source - Data center IPs and residential IP addresses.
IP rotation - Every 3 and 5 minutes or after 15 min.
Authentication - IP based or user/pass.
Bandwidth - Unlimited bandwidth
Speed and performance - Fast and reliable
P2p/ Torrent policy - Not allowed
Usage restrictions - Hacking, torrents, illegal activity
Trial period - No trial
Pricing - Depends on the package
Payment methods - PayPal, credit cards
Money-back guarantee - Yes
Support - 24/7
Control Panel - Simple and easy to use
Storm proxies dashboard panel
So, this is the dashboard panel of storm proxies - you can see your membership information, active resource, add/renew subscriptions, dedicated proxies, backconnect rotating proxies, residential rotating proxies and profile.
Authorizing IP - You can enter your IP address to activate the proxies, then you can select proxies location like U.S, EU or USA + EU. Then you will have main gateways, 3 minutes gatesway and 15 minutes gateways.
Main Gateways:
Main proxies are changing IP address on every HTTP request. Scrapping Search Engines: The number of threads for harvester should not exceed 25% number of threads allowed for your account.
To get best resulting with scrapping - use "Worldwide location" and "Main proxies".
Don't use Main Proxies for Nike, Suprime, TicketMaster and other side that require user sessions.
3 Minutes Gateways:
These proxies change IP on every 3 minutes. Use them only for account registration, social sites, or regular browsing.
Don't use them for scrapping search engines.
15 Minutes Gateways:
These proxies change IP on every 15 minutes. Don't use them for scrapping search engines.
IMPORTANT: Using Storm Proxies for any illegal activity like hacking accounts will result in account termination without refund.
Proxyway gave Storm Proxies with an average rating of 7.7/ 10. According to the review site, the proxy site has very fast proxies and performs well with its targets.
For its residential proxies, they commended that all the plans offer unlimited bandwidth. When it comes to pricing, it provides four types of plans that charge per port and not per GB, so it gives more load.
Storm Proxies can be contacted via a form that can be filled up on its site. They will respond in less than an hour through email. Customers don’t have to wait for too long to answer their queries.
The service offers a limited way to be contacted by their clients. They can only be reached via the form and email. Unlike other services that offer live support and chat, it can be disappointing that they don’t provide this kind of customer support.
The proxy server performs better than others in the market. It offers high speed, which was tested through the free FOGLDN Proxy tester. It is best used for sneaker copping.
Based on the test, as they increase the number of concurrent connections, timeouts also increased. It is also noticeable that the number of blocked IPs is stable with very minimal connection errors.
Storm Proxies worked great with all the targets except for search engines. When tested with Facebook, Amazon, and Aliexpress, the average success rate is 85 percent.
However, it doesn’t work for search engines. The test revealed that the residential proxies were blocked on Google and Yandex.
When it comes to response times, Proxyway found out that its average response time is around 4 seconds. There is a high probability that Storm Proxies' residential proxies are direct Internet Service Provider (ISP) IPs.
Residential proxies are very fast and stable. It also has a small residential IP pool of 40, 000 proxies.
Although Proxyway thinks that Storm Proxies is an excellent tool, it still lacks some features that can make it a great proxy server. All the plans are reasonably priced, stable, and fast. The money-back-guarantee is also a huge plus.
A 2-hour money-back guarantee is available for the general dedicated proxy plans. This is a nice opportunity to test the service before committing to any package.
The issues come with private proxies because the IPs can be found in the US only. You can’t filter per location.
All the plans offer unlimited bandwidth for all the plans, 1 GB per network connection, previously unused IPs, 100 concurrent threads, and multiple subnets and IP classes. All these are all great offers, and there is nothing extraordinary with it.
It also has limited support because it only supports the HTTP protocol. The dashboard is also lacking in some features like usage statistics, support tickets, and live chat.
Another prominent feature lacking is that the dedicated proxies are not useful for search engines. All in all, the proxy service is ideal for some tasks like data extraction. However, if you need a more versatile server, other options can be better.
Stupid Proxy gave Storm Proxies an overall rating of 4.6/ 5. It tested the proxy server on IP compatibility, ISP test, proxy speed, and proxy location.
Here is the summary of how the review site rated the server:
SMLXL
PROs
Varieties of plans and products
Easy to use dashboard
Unlimited bandwidth
Money-back guarantee
Instant access after payment
CONs
No SOCKs proxies
IP authentication only
Small IP pool
Limited geotargeting
Proxy Types and Pricing:
SMLXL
Types:
Private Dedicated Proxies
Backconnect Rotating Proxies
Residential Rotating Proxies
Pricing Based on:
Number of proxy IPs
Number of threads
Number of ports
Location
USA (Cheyenne, LA, and NY)
USA, EU, Worldwide, USA +EU
USA and EU
IP rotation
Static IP
New IP on each HTTP request after 3 min or after 15 mins
Every 3 and 5 mins. New IP for every port
IP source
Data Center IPs
The main gateway is a mix of data center and residential IPs
Only residential IPs
IP replacement
Request IPs replacement up to 2x a month if you don’t ban more than 20% of IPs
There are more than 70, 000 rotating proxies, no need for replacement
There are more than 40, 000 rotating proxies, no need for replacement
Trial period
2 hours on the lowest package
48 hours
2 to 24 hours on the lowest package
Tests conducted by the review site revealed that the location is one factor that may hinder the buying decision of the users. The small pool of IP addresses means that they don’t cover so many locations.
The majority of the addresses are in the US and the EU. Furthermore, they don’t offer a list of locations that can be found in others in the industry.