Shared proxy is far more different from a private proxy.
From the name itself, we can understand that it is being used by multiple users. So whenever any company or organization makes a decision to get themselves a shared proxy it will be available for the general people and not only the company people.
Now every object has its own fair share of pros and cons and shared proxy is no exception. Along with the many advantages it brings within the house it also comes loaded with a lot of disadvantages which can be harmful for many business organizations.
For this reason, itself, the cost of a shared proxy gets reduced drastically in fact many shared proxies are also available for free to multiple users.
A shared server proxy has the ability to support HTTP as well as SOCKS5 service. Shared proxy provides you the best service when you intend to use a number of proxies for a matter of a couple of hours or so.
It can also help you out with search engine optimization or SEO which mostly requires harvesting adequate information from various websites and web pages.
People who allocate a small amount of money for proxy services can avail a shared proxy and obtain optimum results.
Advantages of Shared Proxy
- They are less expensive and also free.
- Both HTTP and SOCK5S services are supported by shared proxy. It also supports online traffic.
- When you are sharing a proxy server, then the cost of the server is also being shared.
- Shared proxy allows a rare user to share each proxy only for a limited period of time thus solving the problem of using several proxies.
- SEO software, which requires harvest data from the internet, in such cases shared proxy can be very helpful.
- Web browsers and other applications can also support the use of shared proxy.
- They are reliable in nature. While using a shared proxy, there is no need of registration or authentication.
Disadvantages of shared proxy
- Despite of providing various advantages, it also has disadvantages. Some of them are listed below:
- It gives you a slow internet experience as multiple users are using the proxy at the same time which in turn results in the overloading of the bandwidth.
- Since they are free and open so they are overpopulated with spammers and hackers. This exposes your personal information, your company information, your credit and financial data as well. It even allows hackers to gain access to your saved passwords.
- Transparency of shared proxy can land you in a major problem. When you are visiting a website, instead of hiding the IP, they just simply pass on to the website.
Why is shared proxy not so popular?
There are several reasons why people have started using private proxies:
- They provide secure web surfing. Here only one person can have the access. Thus, it eliminates the risk of tracking the history of your system or facing the bugs while you are moving from site to the internet.
- With the help of private proxy, you can even create your own online website to promote your business. It actively helps you in achieving your business goal without getting blocked or banned by someone.
- It tends to be slower than a private proxy. It lacks the caching properties and even takes a longer time to fetch information from the websites since multiple users are accessing at the same time.
- There is a risk that your email address is being sold out to different advertising companies while you are using the shared proxy Thus, unwanted advertisement banners connect to the internet and your device becomes more susceptible to malware.
How can a shared proxy be put to use?
As mentioned before a section of users availing proxy services are loyalists of shared proxy. This must mean that they can be put to good use and adequate services must be derived from them. The diverse uses of shared proxy are listed below and explained briefly.
- A user wanting to surf the Internet on a daily basis can avail the services of a shared proxy without any delay. It becomes a very expensive task to afford a dedicated proxy services and hence most casual users performing general use of the Internet usually avails shared proxy.
- The cost of using the shared proxy gets divided between the multiple users using it. That is pretty obvious given that the services of the proxy are shared between multiple users. Many users hence use shared proxy mostly because of this reason.
- Your web browser can be appropriately cached when you use a shared server. Caching helps you to increase the speed of getting inline responses and hence it is performed by multiple users. Caching makes the responses much faster as the file being requested already exists in the cache memory.
- Banned websites can be explored without any fear using a shared proxy. Just one advice, it is essential to perform a proper test and check before you actually use your proxy for browsing banned websites.
- It also allows you to know about the other people using the same proxy. Now as the users get a lot of IP addresses to gain access to a shared server, a lot of times one can get great amount of speeds so that the browser can be improved. For the people engaged in work which is fast and efficient a shared server provides the required amount of access every time.
- Many users are not required to go through any registration process while connecting to the server. They can simply go ahead and connect to the server and then continue to enjoy its benefits.
- Shared proxies are usually accompanied with quick setup time and most free proxies can be accessed just after you have logged in.
- A shared proxy can always be tested so that its source can be identified.
- Shared proxies do not have any limit on the number of people using it. Therefore most of the times you will find yourself connected to lots of different people using several proxies simultaneously.