

Re: what's the catch?

From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 22:50:40 -0800
Message-Id: <a05101015b83764ffa0f3@[]>
To: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>, David Poehlman <poehlman1@home.com>
At 1:32 AM -0500 12/8/01, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>The things that people might consider catches are that there is an issue of
>what information is being stored about you in order to make the suystem work,
>and how hard is it to get what you want from it (do you lose all ads, or do
>you ose some ads and some real content, or ...?)

"Catches" for proxies include:

* There may be time delays introduced by the extra jump to the
   proxy server
* There may be some configuration problems related to logins and the
   the like
* You give up any pretense of privacy as the proxy knows all the sites you
   visit and could log this if they wanted
* Proxy downtime could affect your access, by introducing an extra point
   of failure
* Philosophically, you're now relying on the proxy (or more likely its
   programming) to make the choice as to what you see, but it's possible
   that you may not have access to the algorithm used to control your

Despite all these things, it's still a good choice.  None of these are
a real show-stopper objection to proxies.


Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
Received on Saturday, 8 December 2001 01:53:36 GMT
