Are there any risks running a web proxy website?

 I have had this idea for some time now. And I have been thinking, are there any risks running a web proxy website? I am going to be getting 660GB of bandwidth per month when I colocate my server. I wouldnt mind blowing off some bandwith and maybe running google adsense and some text links. If I could get the website to make $20 to $30 per month that would be perfect.

My only thinking is what are people looking at if they want to hide their ip address. I do not want to get into any trouble for something that someone else has done. Anyone have any comments?

I really can't see the client's prospects in this project.

On the other hand this project could have impacts on the server's load, because except the bandwidth, you should also have in mind the extra processes that will server these pages.

Can you give some more info on this project? I suppose it would be easier to help you this way :)

Well I found 2 scripts that can power the website. I am not to sure on how much of a load it will put on the server. I have a decent server its a P4 3.0GHZ 64BIT HT, 2GB of ram, x2 80GB SATA 150 hard drives, hardware Raid 1. And because my forum is brand new I have no server load. I would also be linking to my forum from the proxy website.


Here are the scripts.
PHP Proxy - http://freshmeat.net/projects/phpproxy/
CGI Proxy - http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/

Sounds interesting, but still I can't imagine why someone could use this service.

Sorry that I am a bit negative on this, but I really want to help you :)

 Well you could use it at work or school if they filter out websites like www.myspace.com. You could use the proxy service to get to that website.  :)

I see. Now I have it clear in my mind.

Your server is ok for this kind of work, but of course you should have a good port if you want to serve pages good, as this process might be bandwidth consuming.

sounds good. I have wanted to start a proxy for a while now... especially since ALL the kids at school use them to get to Myspace, and yes, porn. Anyway, i am also interested in this aswell. Please if you learn anything dealing with risks/problems caused brought up because of running a proxy, do tell :).

Luis

PS. The Proxy is going to be an "extra" on my site. I am not going to center on it much. My site will be dealing with Teen Interests like, Music, Movies, Electronics, TV, and Teen Issues so I am guessing some teens would like to get around Parental Controls and Firewalls :).

I don't know, I think running a proxy will invite scammers to do their illegal activities thru your site...

I've started a proxy site here (just to check this type of site) and I can say that the code is optimal.

So you don't really have to worry about security, but propably you should worry about bandwidth.

yeah these are good to use at places like schools where certain sites are blocked, but most of the places that have these blocks also specifcally block known proxy site.. and another thing, this can be dangerous if the person using your site use it in the wrong way or abuse it and ur site gets shut down cus ur site url is the IP they will be using.. basically ur protecting the user, not yourself.

yeah I see your point... There are so many proxys out there. Why would someone with wrong intesions go to my teen related website. Well I will run the proxy soon.

I bet you use up a lot of bandwidth.

There are always risks. They've been mentioned already, though.

~Crystal

 then whats the point of your post :P

anyway,well ill try out the proxy for a while, if it does consume all of my resources, then ill reconsider.

As there are some days passed from the launch of my proxy I will update this thread a little.

The first problem is the one I predicted, which is the bandwidth. Example : 50 visitors -> 20 mb bandwidth. I know that this is not too much but happens when the site gets some real traffic?

Another issue and for me is the most serious is that there are thousands of proxy sites, and maybe I am too idiot that I haven't made a good research before starting my own. So I suppose it is ok to have a proxy site (as it requires just a few minutes of work) but you should not expecting much from it.

I'm not, Expencting much that is.

It's just a little "extra".

It answers the question.

~Crystal

anyway,well ill try out the proxy for a while, if it does consume all of my resources, then ill reconsider.

okay. well anything new Nik?

No nothing new. If I have something new I will update the thread :)

ok. just checkin.

 I thought I would come back and bump this thread. I started my free proxy website www.myinternetproxy.com and in 2 days I went from 250kb of transfer to 1.53GB of transfer in a day.  8) The killer is it was only 420 visitors, but there were 110k+ pageviews. I didn't even have to advertise my proxy they found me.

That's a good result.

It is strange that people use those sites so much.

I had good traffic results too with my proxy, but no conversions.

made any monet from it?

I think it is too early to talk about money (my proxy is less than a month old) but it makes almost a dollar per day. I guess is not that bad for a new site that you don't have to dmaintain anything, but the resources that it gets it is an issue.

It is 'eating more than 1 GB of bandwidth per day, and before two days it made me upgrade the server, as it crashed it....

oh well i have 400GB of bandwith, so im not so worried... the server crashing, is what I am worried about though.

That's right, the bandwidth itself sais nothing (I have 1TB)

But you need a good server. I will try some time to use a proxy written in Perl, or maybe tweak a little the one that I have, to see if I can deal with the overhead (right now the site is in php compiled with eAccelerator)

Nik you are using a CGI script now arn't you? 
  This looks like fun, ill upload it to my site for a few days and see how much load it puts on the server. Also can't you put a popup on each page they load, and then you get a bit of money each time they click a link?

That's right for both questions. It is a cgi script, and the best way to monetize it is through pop ups

I put a proxy site on my games site as i hope it will bring visitors to it, and also i can't get another domain. Visit it at <<snipped. please don't spam the forum>> and link exchange if you want (PM me to do it)

Lol, any news?
when i see other peoples proxys they have like 110K pageviews from the USA. i get like 40K pageviews from Iran :(
I need serious help, lol.
What ways did you promote it soulwatcher?

Google Adsense has been banning the people who have ads placed on proxy sites so I think it is really harmful.

They are not being banned for having ads on their site, you can have AdSense ads on the front page just not on proxified pages.

Still a lot of people have been banned by Google lately due to 'illegal clicks' It looks like someone has created a bot that gets all the proxy owners banned from AdSense. The messed up thing is that Google doesn't help, when mailing them back they tell you that your account has been re-evaluated and that they came to the same conclusion: invalid clicks, so good bye to you!

Once you get the warning mail from Google you better remove AdSense from your sites ASAP or you can say goodbye to the money in your account.

I think this click bot is related with proxy.org. A lot of people are reporting bots coming from that site, plus I know a few people who want to sew the site owner.

Thats the general idea, but I have just helped someone setting up a proxy site and he got banned as well, while he doesn't have a proxy.org ad up. I haven't had any problem yet and I have a couple proxies listed there.

maybe we need to check some client data before we show our adsense ads...

I noticed that most of the people get banned because of invalid clicks has 1st or 2nd tier ads on proxy.org (thats why some people pissef off)

Interesting idea, but what data to check? Those bots are probably using a real environment (with windows API messages and everything) so I guess it would be impossible to find out that they are not legitimate.

what about to save / read a cookie (lets try simple)

I don't think this would work.

Google has a very complex system to avoid bots, so a working bot should use the mouse, and work the same way a user works.

The only thing you could do was to track ips of the people who click on ads in your whole network.

will say we are back to tools like adlogger :(

I don't understand that Google doesn't investigate this a little better. Quite a few proxy owners that make over $1000 a month have been banned. Assuming Google keeps about 50% of the advertising costs, they must be loosing at least a couple of $10.000 of income each month, probably even closer to a couple of $100.000.

For that kind of money they could put a few people on investigating this issue...

Nico you are right, but I guess that's a very small sum for them :)

We need to create our own protection to this....