ANOTHER UPDATE - 03/02/08 - Neither Proxyfire nor the author of FPL & EPS (which uses Bleech to check proxies) have released new public versions of their software. This therefore means than none of the items needing correcting have been accomplished. To me, this is inexcusable and if I had paid for their so-called "pro" versions (I didn't), I would be demanding a total refund.

Actually, I can't truly recommend any of these programs for any reason.

Any person with a brain should be able to figure out which proxy sites and proxy forums to leech from. Most of the people who post proxy lists, do so on multiple sites (sometimes just using different names). The proxy sites basically all use the same sources and many of them simply leech from the others. There are a few good ones, but they are very rare.

Anyway, taking a few minutes to analyze which sites and forums provide you with the most good proxies and the least amount of deadwood, crap and duplication would be time worth spent. Why on earth anyone would want to leech 60,000+ proxies to wind up with 150 is beyond comprehension ... even if it were done by software. Regardless of what testing method you use, if it takes more than five (5) minutes to test a list, a very high percentage won't be any good by the time you are finished.

PREVIOUS UPDATE - 02/06/08: Proxyfire's problems with this have apparently been corrected according to my early tests. It is nice to see an author react so quickly. I will be removing their inclusion in this report as soon as a new updated version (1.23) is released publicly. Until then everything I've stated stands status quo.

Although the author of FPL & EPS have thanked me for making them aware of this (very large) problem, to date they still have not corrected it.

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Please be advised that both Proxyfire and Bleach (EPS & FPL's proxy checking module), are seriously flawed. Both programs report transparent proxies as being anonymous.

You do not have to take my word for it, simply re-test your lists using Charon (which is free), or use the trial version of AATools (testing limit per session is 100), or use the trial version of HellLab's ProxyChecker. Use the anonymous proxies reported by either Bleach or Proxyfire and notice how many of them are reported transparent by the far superior proxy analyzing tools mentioned above.

Use the same proxyjudge in all programs if you like, but it doesn't matter ... I would suggest that you use an "azenv" judge (you can find a list in our 'Proxy Tools' section. I believe both Bleach and Proxyfire use the following by default:

I no longer recommend that judge as it gives out false positive results.

Select a few of those reported as transparent by Charon or AATools and test them manually in your browser against one of the following sites:

Look at either of the following lines:

REMOTE_ADDR (Your Real IP Address will be shown here if transparent)
REMOTE_HOST (Your Real IP Address will be shown here if transparent)

The authors of both Bleach and Proxyfire have been notified of these problems, but to date have ignored them.

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I tell it like it is and that's offensive to those professing knowledge they don't have.