If I go into proxy settings in a web browser and input an IP to an anonymous proxy server, will that route all of my port connections (including the ones opened by file transfers) or just port 80 traffic?
If it doesn’t route all connections, is there a way to configure my computer to do that?
Also, (tangent) If I have a monitor port on my motherboard (on-board video) and I have a video card, could I use them both to hook up two monitors to my computer to use simultaneously?
You have got some erroneous assumptions about how ports work with browsers, but suffice it to say that it only deals with browser connections. Also, proxies are not routers.
There is no proxy that would handle all different connections. I suspect maybe you mean “router.” Routers and proxies are different things.
What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
Yes, I understand that a proxy is not a router. From what I have read, an anonymous proxy strips your outgoing packets to make you, well anonymous. I figured that a browser only stripped those packets being transmitted through port 80… what I am trying to accomplish is making my downloads more difficult for any outsiders to know what I may be downloading, or maybe where I am downloading from.
My idea was to have all of my internet activity be sent through a proxy and maybe even tunneled through port 22 to encrypt it… though I don’t know how effective or even possible this is.
OK basically there’s many different levels of secure communications and unfortunately the terminology is highly muddled because so many people use it interchangeably.
Any “anonymous” server is a server that doesn’t require you to log in. 99% of the web servers you use are anonymous.
A “proxy” is a server that does your web surfing for you. When you configure your browser to use a proxy, every web request is forwarded to the proxy, which retrieves it and sends it back to you.
A side benefit of a “proxy” is that it performs NAT, or “network address translation.” That means if somebody is watching the target website, they can’t determine the source of the hit. However, if they are monitoring your machine, they can tell that you sent an instruction to the proxy to hit that web page.
An unencrypted anonymous proxy gives you a little protection, but not much. Anyone monitoring your machine can tell what you’re doing from your packets. Additionally, your other communications aren’t proxied at all… your mail, your filesharing, your chat, whatever else you have going on.
What you really want is a VPN which is an encrypted tunnel to another server. Many people interchange the term “VPN” with “anonymous proxy” but as you can see, one is much more secure than the other, so you’d better make sure you know what you’re getting.
You can subscribe to various VPN-based anonymizer services for a monthly or yearly fee. Basically this performs NAT, proxy, and encryption of all services on this machine. This is NOT something that you set up by fooling around with the ports in your web browser.
However, I still wouldn’t trust it to conceal my identity from law enforcement. The address isn’t “thrown away” as you phrased it, rather it is translated and kept secret by your VPN provider. I am pretty sure that if your translated address were detected in some illegal activity, it could be obtained by subpoena if someone really wanted it.