CGI and PHP Proxies

Normal HTTP Servers, that is, servers which are used for example for web browsing, can be used to run proxy scripts for different reasons, mainly security and privacy.

The most common scripts run on HTTP servers are CGI and PHP scripts.

CGI scripts retrieve information from the URL which we want to access, either HTTP or FTP, and update any resource or embedded URLs to point back to the server through the script. This way, our personal information is not sent to the server, providing additional security. These scripts allow extended filtering of ads and cookies and can even remove JavaScript and VBScript from the information retrieved, among other protective uses.

PHP scripts are very similar to CGI proxy scripts and can be run on HTTP proxies mainly to bypass proxy restrictions through a web interface. An additional use of PHP proxies, other than those of CGI proxies, is to bypass restricted access to URLs that may be blocked from the proxy itself.