The Proxy Shore – Settings Explained

As promised here is a more detail description of the available settings from The Proxy Shore. This will soon also be available to see on the site itself.

– Include mini URL-form on every page

This option lets you decide whether or not you want to see a URL and option bar on top of the page your browsing to.
Enabling this option lets you change other settings and surf to other pages during your session.
Disabling this option will just show you the entire page you’re browsing as if you weren’t using a proxy.

– Remove client-side scripting (i.e JavaScript)
Enabling this option will make your browsing session much safer as malware is primarily spread through JavaScript across the web but it will also remove the functionality of some sites (some more than others). For example, the Facebook newsfeed is based on JavaScript, so when you enable this option Facebook will not work properly for you.
We recommend, during a browsing session to trusted websites, disable this option. When visiting websites whose sources you don’t know if you can trust, be safe and enable this option.
You can always en- or disable this option in the top bar.

– Allow cookies to be stored
Cookies are little files that help you load websites quicker, remember your logins and settings. But also are used by advertisers and websites like Google, Facebook and Twitter to track your actions across the web (which search results you click, to which websites you go, which sites you came from).
We recommend not to use cookies except if absolutely necessary for the functionality of a site.

– Show images on browsed pages
This is pretty straight-forward, this option lets you choose whether or not to load images on the sites you visits.
Not loading images has the benefit of sites loading faster so when you are on a slow connection and you’re heading to a mainly text-based website it is handy to disable this option.

– Show actual referring Website
This option simply means whether or not you want to tell other websites, which site you’ve just been on. And to be honest, why would you tell them?

– Use ROT13 encoding on the address
ROT13 is a simple encoding method often used to hide spoilers or sensitive material no everybody might want to read. The encoding method is pretty simply done by rotating letters of the alphabet.
The method might be fairly easily decoded it but does mean somebody has to take the time to decode the web addresses you are visiting. Or simply: nobody can tell by first glance of the url which site you are on.

– Use base64 encoding on the address
These encodings are commonly used to encode binary to text and transfer or store this data like with email or websites.
We recommend this option to be enabled for a more smooth experience of the web.

– Strip meta information tags from pages
This option pretty much explains itself. It gives you the choice of removing meta-data tags from pages you visit. Meta-data includes ip addresses, locations, date and time, browser version, operating system and more.
We recommend enabling this option for a more anonymous experience.

– Strip page title
This option lets you whether or not you want to remove the page titles of websites you visit. For example, if you visit youtube.com with this option enabled, the tab in your browser will display the current URL. With this option disabled it would say ‘YouTube’.
This setting has no anonymity or security features, it is just a matter of preference.

– Store cookies for this session only
With this option enabled, all the cookies you receive during your browsing session (given you have cookies enabled) will be deleted after you leave The Proxy Shore. When disabled, your cookies will be stored in your browser until you delete them manually or a scheduled delete takes place (depending on your browser settings).