Many employers and schools are providing internet access to their employees and students, that’s why most of them are using a web filtering application – mainly Proxy Server. The reason behind the usage of the web filtering application is that they give you the free access so they have the right to set what kind of websites you can only access. Like for example, a school might block adult-oriented webpage to prevent minors from using this in the school, such as to view pornography. Same with the workplace, it is a place where all professionals are gathered to provide a service, you can’t use your company’s internet just to watch pornographies and Netflix, using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
How Proxy Servers Filters The Web?
Most of these filtering applications use a content-filtering proxy server service. The purpose of this service is to be a middleman between your computer and the internet. The process is simple, a proxy server runs the web request (example: Facebook) through a filter, it searches the address in the database from allowed or disallowed websites. Then a system administrator will set the proxy server to allow or block certain sites, so when a site is being blocked, but you think it shouldn’t be blocked, you can file a petition to the IT department to unblock the site on the proxy server.
Moreover, Proxy Server is not only for filtering the web, but it can also be used to improve web performance by saving the most frequently used webpages so the user request won’t go to the first process to access and display a particular webpage. Because of this, the web result page will be faster since it doesn’t need to go back to check whether the web request is on the allowed or disallowed websites.
In addition, a proxy server can also be used to improved security and protection for any businesses. It can also change a user’s IP address, which makes the users and the computers became anonymous when using the World Wide Web. Having this kind of capabilities will make it harder for hackers and attackers to get confidential information from the users.
