Hello,

As a host I'm a little catious about allowing proxy sites on the server. Even though I run very powerful dual xeon systems, I've heard a lot of storys about proxy sites being real resource hogggers.

Just like to hear some opinions :)

I wouldnt recommend hosting them. I have 1 proxy site that takes its own celeron server and still bogs it down.
If you want to host them I would have a server for proxy sites only and not even offer support for it.

Resourcewise, they have the ability to really do some damage. I'd be more concerned with the type of sites that are being visited with the proxy.

Proxy sites can be resource hogs, but if your looking to gain customers and dont have a lot of load issues then you might consider allowing proxies for a while.

I personally wouldn't touch them unless you charged them a fairly high fee. They bring a lot of trouble in regards to resource usage, and are often abused

Proxy sites can be resource hogs, but if your looking to gain customers and dont have a lot of load issues then you might consider allowing proxies for a while.
Short term gain usually equals a long term pain. The principles of your business should remain consistent, and stooping yourself to help out your short term downfalls, is only going to cause issues in the long run. Removing customers after telling them their sites were fine, will cause an uproar and that one customer who complains can turn 20 away.

I'm new here, we at one point offered a filtered product thru a proxy. I would also stay far away from this. :)

Mike

If they're on their own box, and their bandwidth is capped, then by all means it shouldn't matter. However, putting this on a shared box is unwise and will likely be a costly mistake, as others have stated.

i do agree with rohitj. i think proxy is ok untill it is on a full dedicated server with capped bandwidth. but i would recommand you to speak a little bit with your customer asking what they really want to provide by doing this proxy service and which proxy port/method are they going to use.

V.

Keep things simple for yourself and don't allow them.

then don't work in hosting business =)

I would stay away for many reasons, when i worked at a Dedicated server provider we were having constant issues with people allowing there customers to use phpproxy or cgi proxy, and it would do one of two things to the server, 1) cause heavy load, and max out apache once the link to the proxy hit google, and most of the traffic was to pron-o or warz sites. It would also consume large amounts of bandwidth, and the log files sometimes grew at 1-2GB per hour the proxy was under heavy load... maxing out the hard drive if no one was looking.

However the biggest issue of all was the fact that scammers use the proxies to break into peoples email and websites with the logins they stole using phsishing sites... It was only a matter of time before we had authorities asking us to take a box down and then over the drive to them to look at.. and not only did that effect us, it also takes all your data and customers data off line for up to 4 weeks in some cases, longer if they use it as evidence against someone (only happened at the company I worked for twice, and we just never saw the drives again)

All of these things are bad things, and will not only hurt you, but the customers that use proxy sites are not normally the most honest, and will go spam on places like here (WHT) about why your company sucks, etc.

So simply say no to Proxy sites!

But how would I know if one of my clients is using his account as a proxy site?

There are many ways to find out,

1) would be checking all domains via web browser every month
2) If the domain is proxy-time.com, etc then well... .you can figure it out

or the best option is have a script made that runs via cron daily that will email you if it finds scripts with the words "phpproxy" or "cgiproxy" etc. Then you can remove them.

Hosting proxy sites.... Not at all...

However the biggest issue of all was the fact that scammers use the proxies to break into peoples email and websites with the logins they stole using phsishing sites... It was only a matter of time before we had authorities asking us to take a box down and then over the drive to them to look at.. and not only did that effect us, it also takes all your data and customers data off line for up to 4 weeks in some cases, longer if they use it as evidence against someone (only happened at the company I worked for twice, and we just never saw the drives again)


Can you elaborate on this phishing scam a little bit? I have a proxy on one of my boxes that a couple months ago had that accusation thrown at it by ebay. Apparently some spam mails had a link going through the proxy to a phishing site is this what you are referring to...or was the proxy account actually compromised and used to sniff passwords? I'm only asking this to get an idea of how "proxy phishing" scams actually work and what is unique about them.