Access Sites Anonymously Using PHProxy in Firefox

PHProxy is a web based proxy technology designed in the PHP programming language. A PHProxy based web proxy server can download a requested page on its server and then show it to you – thus acting as a proxy. The user is completely hidden behind the PHProxy protective layer of proxy. If you are using Firefox web browser, then you can use the PHProxy add-on in Firefox to automatically view a webpage using the PHProxy web proxy servers. Here is how :

  1. Visit http://phzilla.org/popup.html page in your Mozilla Firefox browser.
  2. Click on the green Download Latest Version button to install the PHProxy add-on

    PHProxy add-on in Firefox

  3. It will prompt you for confirmation. Click on Install Now to proceed. Restart your web browser to complete the installation.

    Install PHProxy add-on

  4. When Firefox has restarted, you are ready to use the PHProxy add-on. Just open a web site as you normally do. When that web site has opened (or failed to open due to network restrictions). Just hover the mouse cursor at the location bar and click on the PHProxy “P” icon that appears as shown. The same site will now be opened using the PHProxy proxy servers. Alternatively, you can press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Q to open the current site using the PHProxy.

    Open a web site using PHProxy

  5. You can also right-click over a link in any web page and choose to open it through the PHProxy as shown :

    Open a link using PHProxy

  6. You would also see the “P” icon in the statusbar. You can right click on the “P” icon in the statusbar (or the location bar) and you can choose many options like privacy level, update or change proxy servers etc. The privacy level is how the web site is fetched – using PHProxy or Cache or a combination of both.

    Right-click options for PHProxy

  7. You can open the options page for the PHProxy add-on by right-clicking on thr “P” icon and selecting Options. In the options page, you can modify, add or remove PHProxy based web servers. You can also set how to parse various elements in the fetched sites like strip cookies, strip javascript or strip page title etc.

    Options for PHProxy add-on in Firefox

You should not use proxy servers for visiting sites that require you to send sensitive or private data like banking or other money transations etc. The data is sent through the proxy server and may be captured by the third party. For more information about the PHProxy you can visit http://phzilla.org/.