How to find good Proxy servers

Proxy servers are used to access Internet by routing
your request to a proxy server instead of directly to
the server with whom you are communicating with.
The proxy server makes a request on your behalf and
return the result of the same back to you. It helps in
cases of Internet censorship when a particular website
or web service is banned in your location, be it a
country or an office.
What generally people do is to open a proxy site in
which they type in the web address or URL they want
to access and then the page is displayed in the browser
by the proxy server and all the link on the page are
converted so that further requests when a user clicks
on a link are routed & served by the proxy server
only. But some desktop applications can also make use
of proxy servers by configuring the options to route
their requests to a proxy server for which you need the
IP Address and Port number of the proxy server and
login credentials (username & password), in case the
proxy server is a private server and not open for
general public. Example: Web browsers, FTP clients,
Torrent clients, Media players etc
And sometimes there is even a need of a country
based proxy because services like Last.fm streams free
internet radio to users from US, UK & Germany. There
can be several examples.
Whenever you need a good and stable proxy server,
you can get a list at HideMyAss.com. The page itself
keeps on updating the status of proxy servers.
You can filer proxy server listing by based on their
location i.e. country, the port they run on (some
applications only accept a proxy on a particular port or
don ’t let you change it)
How to find a good proxy server?
If you observe the list, there are a lot of options to
choose from. Good thing, but with more options comes
the problem of picking up a good one. So, I will give
you a quick tip to pick up a fast & speedy proxy
server.
If you see the list, there are two bars which show the
health of the proxy server. First one shows the speed
and the other shows the connection time. So only look
for those which show green state and hence are a
good option. But chose those which are not completely
green but those which are a little less because they are
less likely to get a stream of more users and should
sustain for more time before they go busy and stop
working for you, hence you will need to make less
switches as compared to picking up which is already
stuffed by users. Moreover some web services might
put up a restriction on users who might be using their
service from the same IP (proxy server).
And also I would recommend to avoid using proxy
servers for transferring any sensitive data like your
gmail accounts, bank accounts etc. You can never be
sure what they can do (I mean they are technically
feasible of saving what data you pass through them
which means your login credentials are exposed. If you
have any questions, feel free to give me a shout in the
comments.