The principle behind A4Proxy is the following: you configure your browser to use A4Proxy program as a proxy server. That means that instead of sending all requests to websites directly, your browser will be sending them to A4Proxy. As a result, A4Proxy will be able to relay those requests through anonymous proxy servers, so that when they finally reach the destination website, it won’t be able to recognize their origin.
So there are two logical parts of the configuration: you must set up your browser properly, so that it will connect to A4Proxy; and you must set up A4Proxy so that it will choose the right proxy servers.
Note that you normally change the settings in your browser only once: after you have configured it properly, you forget about it, and control everything through A4Proxy. As for A4Proxy, you might need to change its settings quite often, according to your needs; at least you will need to re-check the proxies from time to time (e.g. once in a few days).
Please read about the configuration of your browser here. When the browser is configured correctly, the A4Proxy icon in the Windows tray must be flashing as you surf and there must be activity and statistics on the Proxy Activity tab. Please let me know if you don’t see any activity there. Once you see that the requests are physically travelling through A4Proxy, it means that your browser is configured correctly. Similarly, if you can’t get to any websites once you reconfigure your browser, it may indicate that everything is actually fine: the browser sends the requests to A4Proxy, but probably A4Proxy itself is not configured properly.
Configuring A4Proxy on the basic level involves the following:
1. Updating proxy status. You must regularly update the status (i.e. anonymity and speed) of all proxies in the database. It is done by selecting all proxies (in the Edit menu, choose Select All) and then “checking” them (click the Check Proxy button, which is on the Proxy Check tab in the program). There will always be some bad proxies (marked with a red cross), some non-anonymous ones (black dots), but most of them should be good anonymous proxies (green dots).
2. Choosing the right proxy(s) to use. It is important to remember that A4Proxy never takes the basic decision as to which proxy or proxies to use; and although it can change proxies automatically, it is for you to decide which proxies it will choose from.
There are two possible strategies: using a single proxy or forming a group of proxies and making A4Proxy pick one of them for each page on a random basis. You should learn how to use a single proxy first:
The best proxy is the one with the least number in the Response Time column (Check Proxy tab) and with a green dot. You will easily find it if you sort the list by clicking on the header of the Response Time column.
In order to have A4Proxy use one single proxy, and not a group of proxies, you must make sure that the option called “Use a new proxy on each request” (Proxy Options tab) is disabled.
That one proxy is called “Default proxy” in the terminology of the program. It is displayed in bold in the proxy list, and you can change it at any time, by right-clicking on a proxy you like and selecting “Set As Default” from the local menu that will appear. Alternatively, you can simply click it so that it becomes highlighted, and then choose “Set as default” in the Edit menu in A4Proxy. However, the right-click method is faster, so use that.
Well, once you have pointed your browser to A4Proxy and selected a good proxy as default, everything must work for you. This is what the basic level is all about: re-checking the proxies, selecting the best as default, and getting back to surfing. You are anonymous.