Skip to main content

Proxy Tool: Change Proxies, User Agent, HTTP Referrer and More in Firefox

Proxy Tool is an add-on for Firefox that makes it super easy to switch to a proxy server. No need to search for proxies – available proxies are automatically added to Firefox, you just have to choose them. This is where normally other proxy add-ons stop. But Proxy Tool actually takes off from here. Changing proxies is just one of the many functions little devil is capable of doing. You can spoof your browser user-agent, fake operating system and even change HTTP referrer, that websites uses to identify who sent visitors to their sites.

Once Proxy Tool is installed, it takes its place in a corner of the add-ons bar. If you have the add-ons bar turned off, no worries, because Proxy Tool can be reached from Firefox’s context menu as well. When Proxy Tool is turned off, which it is by default, the icon will be red. One click, and the icon turns green indicating that it’s ready to use. Now right-click on the icon or just right click anywhere on the page to open Proxy Tool’s menu. One glance at this menu should be sufficient for you to judge this add-on’s usefulness.

proxy-tool

At the top is the Referrer menu. This leads to a sub-menu with a number of pre-built referrers. These includes google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com, facebook.com, twitter.com etc. You can also add custom referrers and rotate them among itself periodically. A nice way to screw up referral traffic data on someone else’s Google Analytics account, although I suggest you not to do that. There is no privacy to be earned by faking the referral data. Anyway, the option is there.

proxy-tool2

Next up is the User Agent menu. This is interesting. It allows you to choose from up to 46 different user-agents encompassing a wide range of browsers of multiple versions. You can become Firefox 2.0 to Firefox 7.0, or Chrome 6 to Chrome 16, or Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 10, Opera 10 to Opera 12, and even AOL. You can also change the user agent to iPhone and iPad and Android. The description on the add-on page says “46+ million different user agents”, but I doubt that many user agents even exits. In any case, the list is large.

proxy-tool3

To choose a proxy, go to the Proxy menu and select from one of the available. This list is automatically updated once a day, which might not be enough unfortunately, as proxies rarely remain up for 24 hours. However, you can import your own list of proxies, up to 500. Proxy Tool supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS proxies.

If you mouse-over the icon in the add-ons bar you can see a large tooltip that displays the current state of your cloaking business.

proxy-tool4

Proxy Tool can also delete website cookies, the elusive Flash cookie, and the sinister evercookie that appeared on the scene a few months ago.

Proxy Tool is definitely one of the better proxy add-ons I’ve tried on any browser. Try this if you juggle a lot of proxies. You won’t be disappointed.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.
17 comments
Read more

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.
1 comment
Read more

Diagram 101: Different Types of Diagrams and When To Use Them

Diagrams are a great way to visualize information and convey meaning. The problem is that there’s too many different types of diagrams, so it can be hard to know which ones you should use in any given situation. To help you out, we’ve created this diagram that lays out the 7 most common types of diagrams and when they’re best used:
Post a Comment
Read more