Web Proxies for Anonymous Scientific Peer-Review?

nodrogluap asks: "As a scientist, I am often asked to peer-review journal papers. The peer-review process is generally supposed to be anonymous, but often times it is necessary to extensively visit the author's Web site to check and test Web interfaces to software and databases described in the paper. It can be easy for the author to surmise who's reviewing the paper based on Web logs (paper subject + gleaned reviewer's institution), especially when the reviewers are getting the first public crack at the URLs. Are there free, reliable HTTP and HTTPS proxies out there (not including servers run by people who've somehow mistakenly enabled an unrestricted proxy server in Apache)?"

Comments

Tor

[Loualbano2]

Basically an anonymous proxy network. The site owners will see the tor endpoints in the logs

http://tor.eff.org/

tor

[f0rtytw0]

Try using tor (http://tor.eff.org/) along with privoxy. There are instuctions on the page on how to get the two working well together. Its pretty easy to set up and it only took me a few minutes before I was up and running.

Stayinvisible.com

[SpaceLifeForm]

Pick a fully anonymous proxy.

Firefox Extension: SwitchProxy Tool

[Kvorg]

By fat the easiest solution is the SiwtchProxy Tool, a Firefox Extension that is easy to install and manage.

SiwtchProxy Tool offers a simple status-bar interface where the user can change proxies on the fly. It comes with a pre-set anonymous setting which will change the proxy periodically (user-supplied value). For the list of proxies used, you can supply a simple text file or use a web-based dynamicaly updated list.

For SwitchProxy Tool homepage, see http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/switchpr oxy or https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&id=125
(I have not observed any of the problems mentioned by the users - with the obvious exception that sites that know you by IP address won't recognize you if you use the anonymising proxy, but that can hardly be construed as a bug.)

You can find several suitable anonymising proxy lists in this forum:
http://forums.mozmonkey.com/viewtopic.php?t=19

It's really quite fast, elegant and easy.

plenty of (mostly) free proxies out there

[paltemalte]

Anonymouse surfing: http://www.anonymization.net/ http://www.anonymizer.com/ http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/ians/ http://www.guardster.com/ http://www.antiproxy.com/ http://www.attackcensorship.com/ http://proxify.com/ http://www.anonymous.as/ http://www.mezzy.com/s-index.php http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html http://unipeak.com/ http://www.urlencoded.com/ http://www.behidden.com/ Full system proxy systems: http://tor.eff.org/ http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ http://internet.flashback.se/ http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html http://www.privoxy.org/ http://www.silentsurf.com/ http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circu mventor-instructions.html Ordinary proxies: http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/firewall/cou ntry.aspx/Sweden-se http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1.html http://www.proxz.com/ http://www.digitalcybersoft.com/ProxyList/ http://www.freeproxy.ru/ http://www.samair.ru/proxy/ http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_proxy.htm http://www.rrdb.org/ http://www.free-proxy-servers.com/ http://www.proxylists.net/ http://www.proxywhois.com/anonymous-proxy-list.htm http://www.openproxies.com/ Plenty, as said.

Re:Why really bother?

[poincaraux]

You seem to forget that most professors, even those in computer science, don't have an IT background and don't think of things like "web logs". Even those that do aren't generally going to have access to the logs on their departmental webservers.

I think you're pretty wrong here. Many resources are hosted in the lab, rather than by the department. Looking at the logs is easy. I am quite sure that people do it. We submitted a paper recently where it would have been very easy to determine the reviewers by looking at the logs. We didn't, but it would have been dead simple.

This can be particularly bad because, in academia, there are quite a few people who hold grudges for way too long.

putty

[Macgyver7017]

You can use putty (free windows ssh client) to create a SOCKS4 proxy that appears to come from any machine you can ssh to. Google for putty and click the first hit.

To set up the proxy:
under the tunnels settings, create a "dynamic" tunnel on port 8080 or some port of your preference. Then after the ssh session is up, point your browser at a SOCKS4 proxy on localhost, port 8080 (or whatever you used).

It can also be helpful to enable keepalive packets to keep your firewall from closing the idle ssh session.

Just get a friend to give you shell access, or maybe your institution has a shared machine you can ssh to for the proxy to come from.