When you use a proxy, how does it handle your DNS messages?
When you use a proxy, how does it handle your DNS messages?
I need a proxy to hide my internet address. If I use a browser-level proxy instead of turning off the whole computer, what happens when I ask my computer to look up names on the web? Does that mean every single request goes through the proxy, or does it skip the proxy and show my real IP? Does it all come down to how the specific server is set up, or do all proxies work in exactly the same way? If I want more privacy when using a proxy, should I get a special one just for DNS calls? Thanks!
Your computer sends data to a DNS server that comes with your system. No, that's not how it works. A special service turns a name into an address so things can talk. There are also free ones on the internet. You probably don't need to pay for this right now. If you want something better than just using a regular service, maybe try a VPN instead (not just a simple proxy).
Thanks for clearing that up. I have a few more questions. When I send a request to the DNS resolver while going through a proxy, does it just show me the server's IP back to the proxy? Or does it go straight to the server without showing my real IP? Basically, if I use an unencrypted DNS with a proxy, do I put my real IP right in front of that server trying to talk to me? No, I'm looking for a proxy because my VPN IPs are getting blocked.
DNS server is a simple device. You send it hostname, it returns IP address. Then your pc sends request to IP address (received from DNS service). In case of web proxy, 1. Proxy name is sent to DNS, you receive proxy IP address; 2. Web request is sent to proxy. 3. Any further DNS requests (from your web query) are handled by proxy. a) Proxy sends web server hostname to DNS service, receives IP address, b) Proxy passes web request to web server (using IP), receives response and c) Forwards web response to you. Web server only sees requests from proxy. It does not see your requests or your IP address.
Ok, now I get it that the server I am talking to doesn't know my real IP address, but what about the internet service provider in this whole thing? Does the ISP see which website I want to visit? Let's say I'm trying to go to Facebook using a proxy. Facebook only knows the IP of the proxy, not mine. What does the ISP know then? Does the ISP know that I am going to Facebook or do they just notice that I am using a proxy and can only see the proxy server's IP? In my example I am using both a HTTP proxy and DNS over HTTPS.
If you need to stay away from your internet service provider, you must use secure HTTPS messages. Plain old HTTP asks get completely read even if someone is behind a middleman.
Even if I use HTTPS, will my internet address (IP) change when I go online? I thought that encryption only covers what's moving, but maybe it also hides where I'm actually connected from? Does this mean anyone watching can still track my location or server details behind the secure connection?
First, your IP addresses mean less than they used to before. Think about how we talk today using those internet buzz words like cloud. Before, a web server was just one real machine in a data center. Now, these "servers" are often virtual things that exist many different places at once and have lots of different IP numbers. Also, you can have several servers from different companies sharing the same pool. You might tell someone the IP belongs to Amazon or Google but not which exact service is using it. This changes a lot depending on how each server works. You probably shouldn't use a proxy if your main goal is just to hide your traffic. Instead, they are usually used to pass through some restrictions so you can pretend you are somewhere else. It also hides your real IP from the end server but not from your internet service provider (ISP). A big problem with using a proxy is that it basically does what someone would do to steal your data by doing a man-in-the-middle attack. Things like HTTPS or SSL are designed specifically to stop this, so they make encryption better and more secure. This makes the main reason to use a proxy disappear completely. In the past, people used proxies to speed things up by storing copies of websites on them and sharing that load between servers. But today, these proxies mostly just act like simple network address translators (NAT) instead of really caching data for performance reasons. They usually just let your HTTPS connection pass through while changing where it looks like you came from. Even though this has changed since I wrote about it last time, a regular web browser can't easily run two different secure HTTPS connections at the same time with just one proxy. This means the link between you and the proxy is not encrypted; anyone can see both your real IP address and where the final server is located. So, something like a VPN that uses SSL to encrypt data is much more important than a regular proxy because it makes sure data stays secret. A key difference here is that while many people use their own SSL for VPNs, this kind of encryption doesn't happen through a standard "web" session connection.
Thank you so much for answering. Proxies are cool stuff. I heard about them before but just recently learned how well they work for specific tasks that regular VPNs can't do. But from a security point of view, they aren't really good at all. You made a great point about HTTPS traffic being visible between me and the proxy. I have another question to ask here. Let's say I go on Google and search for used cars. Normally, without using a proxy, my ISP would only know that I visited Google and not exactly what words I searched for because the connection uses HTTPS. Does this change when I use a proxy? If I'm using an HTTP proxy, wouldn't my ISP be able to see what I searched on Google even though the website itself is secure (HTTPS), because the traffic between me and the proxy isn't encrypted? I hope this makes sense.
You need to learn more about how packets are packed when they travel through the internet. https encrypts your computer's data before sending it, but it stays encrypted until it reaches its final destination. If you use a proxy or vpn, traffic goes through someone else in between. But even then, your original data keeps being encrypted at the end, though some extra info like the address label becomes readable because that is required to get the job done. A proxy wraps this packet again and sends it to the server using the proxy's own address as the destination. The server takes the packet apart and then forwards the original data directly to its final spot based on what was in the header. Your internet service provider sits between you and the proxy, so they see the initial header but not the hidden parts inside the packet. However, if a non-encrypted proxy were used instead of a vpn, it would still wrap the packet with its own info, letting you peek inside to read the final destination address just like that. A vpn does this in two ways: it encrypts your https traffic first and then wraps it again with another layer using encryption from the vpn software itself. So now, your isp can only see the initial header sending data to the vpn server while completely ignoring what's hidden inside the packet. You could have layers of wrapping done multiple times depending on what you are doing. For example, you might encrypt some data, send it over https which adds encryption once more, put a vpn in the middle that encrypts it a third time and so on. Every step only peels back what is allowed to see while sending the rest where the next layer says to go. There is a lot of activity routing traffic around the internet as your packet gets wrapped and unwrapped at every stop along the way with this top layer header only addressed to the next stop in line. That is why encryption matters so much; all these middle steps can only see one single header before they reach nothing underneath it.