Welcome to q22w
q22w allows you to browse your favorite websites fast and anonymous. Bypass your work or school's firewall that may be blocking you. While you surf here you are anonymous, your IP address will not be tracked. Privacy is important and using q22w will allow you to keep your identity hidden.
Here at q22w, we are against the use of software that prevents full access to the internet, and for that reason we freely offer our service to everyone. Using our service, you can access websites that are blocked by your network. Our servers are fast and able to handle most websites.
Our proxy also hides your IP, by routing your connection through our servers.
q22w is the pragmatic web surfer's guide to online privacy and anonymous web surfing. We give you the information and tools you need to be confident and in command of your web surfing experience. Here you'll find information on the latest privacy issues facing Web consumers to relevant privacy technology.
Your right to anonymity
Amendments 4 and 5 of The United States Bill Of Rights protect the right to be free of unwarranted and unwanted government intrusion into one's personal and private affairs, papers, and possessions. Article 12 of The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Despite some charges to the contrary, anonymous web surfing is not the sole province of criminals. Anonymity also serves whistle blowers, free speech advocates, and people just looking for personal privacy online. Privacy is not a crime and anonymity is not morally ambiguous or wrong, they are your right.
Hotlinking directly to proxied pages is not permitted.
Technical challenges to online privacy
The Internet did not evolve with privacy in mind. In fact, the protocols that provide the fundamental underpinnings of the Internet are inherently non-anonymous. It's just a simple matter of computers needing to know each other's addresses in order to exchange data. For instance, any webserver can detect your Internet Protocol (IP) address. Other characteristics that a server can detect about you are your referrer (the site from which you are linking), the user-agent (the program you are using to browse the web), and your operating system.
What does your IP address reveal about you?
Your IP address reveals your point of entry to the Internet and can be used to trace your communications back to your ISP, your employer's network, your school, a public terminal. Though your IP address may not identify you personally, an IP is a unique identifier which represents your computer's digital ID while you are online.
It is possible to disguise your IP address on the web by using an anonymous proxy server. A proxy acts as an intermediary, routing communications between your computer and the Internet. A proxy specializing in anonymous surfing, however, uses its own IP address in place of yours in every outgoing request.
Approaches to proxy
Proxies are commonly used for several reasons: security, load balancing, data caching in order to reduce bandwidth demands, and censorship or filtering. Filtering proxies insulate you from objectionable elements of Webpages such as cookies, ad banners, dynamic content like Javascript, Java Applets and ActiveX controls. Some anonymous proxies encrypt your communications to protect you from monitoring and surveillance. Be careful, though, not all proxies are anonymous or secure! Here is an overview of the basic approaches to proxy:
Web-based Proxies:
Web-based Proxies are powered by server-side softwares such as CGIProxy, PHProxy, Glype, and custom proxy scripts. These proxies work entirely through a web browser. Usually all that is needed to hide your IP address and surf anonymously is to visit the service's homepage in a web browser and enter a URL (website address) in the form provided. There is no requirement to download or install software or reconfigure your computer. To work, a CGI based proxy must manipulate the document you've requested and all its associated elements and objects. This can be tricky, and not all proxies are as efficient or effective as others. Some services are slow and may produce errors while rendering the many variations of webpage code. But they are popular, and easy to use.
Proxy Software and VPN Service:
What is VPN?
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network technology that creates a secure network connection over a public network such as the Internet or a private network owned by a service provider. Large corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies use VPN technology to enable remote users to securely connect to a private network.
A VPN can connect multiple sites over a large distance just like a Wide Area Network (WAN). VPNs are often used to extend intranets worldwide to disseminate information and news to a wide user base. Educational institutions use VPNs to connect campuses that can be distributed across the country or around the world.
In order to gain access to the private network, a user must be authenticated using a unique identification and a password. An authentication token is often used to gain access to a private network through a personal identification number (PIN) that a user must enter. The PIN is a unique authentication code that changes according to a specific frequency, usually every 30 seconds or so.
Protocols
There are a number of VPN protocols in use that secure the transport of data traffic over a public network infrastructure. Each protocol varies slightly in the way that data is kept secure.
IP security (IPSec) is used to secure communications over the Internet. IPSec traffic can use either transport mode or tunneling to encrypt data traffic in a VPN. The difference between the two modes is that transport mode encrypts only the message within the data packet (also known as the payload) while tunneling encrypts the entire data packet. IPSec is often referred to as a "security overlay" because of its use as a security layer for other protocols.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) use cryptography to secure communications over the Internet. Both protocols use a "handshake" method of authentication that involves a negotiation of network parameters between the client and server machines. To successfully initiate a connection, an authentication process involving certificates is used. Certificates are cryptographic keys that are stored on both the server and client.
Point-To-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is another tunneling protocol used to connect a remote client to a private server over the Internet. PPTP is one of the most widely used VPN protocols because of it's straightforward configuration and maintenance and also because it is included with the Windows operating system.
Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) is a protocol used to tunnel data communications traffic between two sites over the Internet. L2TP is often used in tandem with IPSec (which acts as a security layer) to secure the transfer of L2TP data packets over the Internet. Unlike PPTP, a VPN implementation using L2TP/IPSec requires a shared key or the use of certificates.
VPN technology employs sophisticated encryption to ensure security and prevent any unintentional interception of data between private sites. All traffic over a VPN is encrypted using algorithms to secure data integrity and privacy. VPN architecture is governed by a strict set of rules and standards to ensure a private communication channel between sites. Corporate network administrators are responsible for deciding the scope of a VPN, implementing and deploying a VPN, and ongoing monitoring of network traffic across the network firewall. A VPN requires administrators to be continually be aware of the overall architecture and scope of the VPN to ensure communications are kept private.
Advantages and Disadvantages
A VPN is a inexpensive effective way of building a private network. The use of the Internet as the main communications channel between sites is a cost effective alternative to expensive leased private lines. The costs to a corporation include the network authentication hardware and software used to authenticate users and any additional mechanisms such as authentication tokens or other secure devices. The relative ease, speed, and flexibility of VPN provisioning in comparison to leased lines makes VPNs an ideal choice for corporations who require flexibility. For example, a company can adjust the number of sites in the VPN according to changing requirements.
There are several potential disadvantages with VPN use. The lack of Quality of Service (QoS) management over the Internet can cause packet loss and other performance issues. Adverse network conditions that occur outside of the private network is beyond the control of the VPN administrator. For this reason, many large corporations pay for the use of trusted VPNs that use a private network to guarantee QoS. Vendor interoperability is another potential disadvantage as VPN technologies from one vendor may not be compatible with VPN technologies from another vendor. Neither of these disadvantages have prevented the widespread acceptance and deployment of VPN technology.
SOCKS Proxy
What is a SOCKS proxy server?
Though this protocol was developed long ago enough, it is rather new (compared to the HTTP proxy). SOCKS allows to work with any (version SOCKS 4 - with TCP, SOCKS 5 - with TCP and UDP) protocols. A socks proxy simply transfers data from a client to a server, not penetrating into this data contents (therefore it can work with HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, NNTP, etc.).
Anonymity of a SOCKS Proxy
As SOCKS (as it was already marked above) transfers all data from a client to a server, nothing adding from itself, from the point of view of a web-server, a socks proxy is a client. Therefore anonymity of this type of proxy servers is really always absolute.
Using SOCKS Proxies
At present time there exist 2 versions of the SOCKS protocol: 4 and 5. The 4th version, as it appeared earlier, is more widespread. However, now the 5th version is also supported by many popular programs such as ICQ (old ICQ versions, in general, could use only SOCKS proxies), Napster, AudioGalaxy, Emule etc. Generally speaking, as a SOCKS proxy can "proxy" any TCP / UDP protocol, it could be used also by mail programs, but they do not do it. Therefore, for such programs (which cannot work with socks) there was developed a special software automatically enabling TCP and UDP networking client applications to traverse a SOCKS server.
HTTP Proxy
What is HTTP proxy server?
HTTP proxy server is a proxy, allowing working on the Internet with HTTP and (not always) FTP protocols. It (as well as other proxy servers) can carry out caching of information downloaded from the Internet.
Let's have a more detailed look over its abilities.
Anonymity of HTTP Proxy
HTTP proxy servers have several anonymity levels. It depends on purposes, which a proxy is used for, so an anonymity requirement is not always an essential one. Conditionally HTTP proxy servers by their anonymity degree could be divided onto:
Transparent - these proxies are not anonymous. They, first, let a web server know that there is used a proxy server and, secondly, "give away" an IP-address of a client. The task of such proxies, as a rule, is information caching and/or support of Internet access for several computers via single connection.
Anonymous - these proxy servers let a remote computer (web-server) know, that there is used a proxy, however, they do not pass an IP-address of a client.
Distorting - unlike the previous type, they transfer an IP-address to a remote web-server, however, this address is a phantom: randomly generated by a proxy server or any fixed (not your) IP. So, these proxies distort your IP address from the point of view of a web-server.
High anonymous (elite) - they do not send your IP-address to a remote computer. Also, they do not inform that there is used any proxy server! So, a web-server "thinks" that it works directly with a client.
This anonymity classification is rather conventional. There are many other classifications, specifying / expanding / generalizing this one.
Using HTTP Proxies
Now HTTP proxy servers are the most widespread. Their support (ability to use them) is included into many programs: browsers, download managers etc. However, their support is not realized at a level of an operating system - in order to use them, you should configure all programs, which should use proxies, in an appropriate way