A proxy is a server that acts on your behalf — it makes network requests for you and hands the responses back to your device.
Explanation
The word "proxy" is direction-neutral — it just means a stand-in. In networking, a proxy sits between two endpoints and forwards traffic. Your device asks the proxy for something; the proxy asks the real destination; the response comes back through the proxy to you. The destination sees the proxy's IP address, not yours. Your local network sees an encrypted connection to the proxy, not to the destination. That indirection is what makes proxies useful for access control, filtering, caching, and unblocking. A web proxy is one specific kind of proxy — a website that fetches other websites for you in a browser tab. Corporate web filters, Cloudflare, and CroxyProxy are all proxies too, in different directions and for different purposes.
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