News: SSL secure access to pickaproxy.com now available

One of the concerns with using pickaproxy.com as your proxy server is that the information you see in your browser, and that you send to web sites, can be monitored more easily than if you did not use a proxy server. The connection between your computer and our server is a single point of access, and if we were so inclined we could watch the content coming and going. This is true for much of the internet, and for any proxy server, and especially true in some countries such as those singled out by Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) in their November 2005 article The 15 Enemies of the Internet.

We are not doing any such monitoring, first off, and have no plans to do so. But we are now offering a way for you to secure this data flowing between you and our server. This can be done by installing and configuring the open source "stunnel" software on your computer. stunnel has been available for many year, and works by using OpenSSL to encrypt all communication between your computer and our server. You then configure your "proxy" settings and your "stunnel" settings as follows:

• rather than "tryout.pickaproxy.com" and port "8123" you configure your proxy settings to be "localhost" and port "8100", and your stunnel settings to be "accept = 8100" and "connect = tryout.pickaproxy.com:7123"
• rather than "us.pickaproxy.com" and port "8125" you configure your proxy settings to be "localhost" and port "8100", and your stunnel settings to be "accept = 8100" and "connect = us.pickaproxy.com:7125"
• rather than "uk.pickaproxy.com" and port "8126" you configure your proxy as localhost port 8100, and your stunnel as accept = 8100 and connect = uk.pickaproxy.com:7126
• rather than "fr.pickaproxy.com" and port "8129" you configure your proxy as localhost port 8100, and your stunnel as accept = 8100 and connect = fr.pickaproxy.com:7129
• rather than "ru.pickaproxy.com" and port "8130" you configure your proxy as localhost port 8100, and your stunnel as accept = 8100 and connect = ru.pickaproxy.com:7130
• rather than "cn.pickaproxy.com" and port "8131" you configure your proxy as localhost port 8100, and your stunnel as accept = 8100 and connect = cn.pickaproxy.com:7131
• rather than "ca.pickaproxy.com" and port "8132" you configure your proxy as localhost port 8100, and your stunnel as accept = 8100 and connect = ca.pickaproxy.com:7132

stunnel is available for download from http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html and at this time we are not providing support or assistance with installing or configuring stunnel, but we will eventually offer this service. I will say that stunnel configuration is not that difficult, and is done by making changes to the stunnel.conf file.

Comments

[ulunkz]

In this day(2009), does that ssl still working???

I was just tried that on my stunnel but thats not working now. So i was enter in my opera(without stunnel) https://us.pickaproxy.com:7125.
And the browser said to me that the ssl authentication was expired.

Its that right??

Cause i want to acces it with my stunnel, without paying anything.

[Wesley Kenzie]

I will check into it ulunkz, and let you know what I find. As an aside, have you tried our Hamachi LogMeIn setup? Personally, I think it is cleaner and simpler to use, with the same benefits as stunnel.

[Wesley Kenzie]

Also, with regards to your trying to point Opera to https://us.pickaproxy.com:7125 I would expect Opera to complain, since our SSL cert is for www.pickaproxy.com and not for us.pickaproxy.com