Okay maybe not illegal, but isn’t the idea of a proxy site bad for any other website? Like does it not subtract from another sites traffic if a person were to use a proxy site to surf that website?
Say 10 people use a proxy site to surf facebook on their facebook accounts. Wouldn’t facebook be mad that all this traffic is coming from one server IP address, so the unique visitors looks like 1 when it should be 10?
Please clear me up here guys.
Thanks!
Nothing wrong with proxies. If a user wants to use a proxy well that is there choice, whether Facebook is “mad” about it is irrelevant.
Is it true that proxies just download html pages and host them on their own servers? So you are just viewing the same page, but not on facebook’s servers, but rather hosted on the proxy’s server?
Maybe a little research would help you understand the process better. 
Nope, proxies host nothing. They are just a middle man that accesses the location on the user’s behalf.
No I mean, the use cURL to download the page ONCE and then discard the connection as soon as the page is loaded. Right?
I don’t see anything wrong with using Proxy servers. Mostly people uses it for their own security.
Am I right though? The proxy server quickly downloads the contents of the pages visited, then discards them once the user can view them on their machine. So the user is never talking to the servers of which they want to browse, but rather just to the proxy server who is hosting that content for a split second as it downloads it. right?
That’s the idea, yes.
What’s the problem with a site showing less unique visitors?
Not really. Think of it as a browser within the browser. The proxy server probably has caching mechanicaisms, but nothing special. Think of calling your buddy to log into your email and say how many messages in your inbox.
They are illegal if they are used for some illlegal activity. Proxies are unsafe as they could cache your user names and passwords.
I don’t think using proxies is a wrong process. Sometimes when you face problems in your internet, you can simply use proxy servers as they acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers.