Proxy Services Are Totally Unsecure. Here Are Alternatives

[tangor]

Millions of people across the world use free proxy services to bypass censorship filters, improve online security, and access websites that aren’t available in their country. But an analysis has found those free services come at an unexpected cost for users: their privacy and security. Christian Haschek, an Austria-based security researcher, wrote a script that analyzed 443 open proxies, which route web traffic through an alternate, often pseudo-anonymous, computer network. The script tested the proxies to see if they modified site content or allowed users to browse sites while using encryption. According to Haschek’s research, just 21 percent of the tested proxies weren’t “shady.”

[wired.com...]
Posted as info only as many do use proxies in their web research, etc.

[topr8]

i don't know anything about proxies - but if you go down the route of paying, wouldn't you be better off renting a cloud 'server' (as in a common webhosting package these days) for yourself and setting it up as your own private proxy service. i'm pretty sure there is open source software available for you to set this up reasonably easily ... is there a drawback to doing it yourself? i appreciate you may need a server in both the usa and uk (and potentially elsewhere) to perhaps do this.