Frequently Asked Questions

About WonderProxy

How does it work?

You will configure your web browser (or other internet application) to use an HTTP proxy, this is pretty easy. Once that’s done you use the application normally; the only difference is that the traffic is routed through your selected proxy server. For details on how to set up a proxy, check out our documentation.

To make things even easier we've released the Switcher, a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge which handles proxy configuration for you. WonderProxy is also compatible with many command line tools, and test automation suites.

This service is incredibly different from the multitudes of web based proxies available today. Once you’ve configured your browser the proxy itself is transparent in the process. You use your regular address bar, regular navigation buttons, everything.

Is it easy to switch between proxies?

Incredibly easy! All you need to do is change the hostname. Installing the Switcher browser extension lets you switch between proxies with a few clicks.

Can I change which proxies I have in my account?

Yes, you may remove servers from your account that haven’t been used in the current billing period. This should allow you to select new servers as your needs change.

Can I download files through the proxy?

Yes. The bandwidth associated with the download will of course appear on your account.

Does video streaming work?

Yes. As HTML5 video has replaced Flash & Silverlight for video players this has actually gotten easier, as Flash and Silverlight traditionally performed poorly with proxy servers. Note that WonderProxy is designed to help creators ensure content is presenting correctly, not for avoidance of geo-blocks (which is against our terms of service).

Is it slow?

No. The only additional latency you will see is the fact that your traffic has to go further (from your machine to the proxy, from the proxy to the website, then back again). All of our proxy servers reside on good machines in great data centers; their load values tend to hover around 0.00. So no, it’s not slow.

What happens with HTTPS connections?

They still work. Your browser issues a CONNECT request to the proxy, which passes on the request. The server returns the encrypted response which is forwarded to your machine. While the proxy does act as a relay for the request, it is unable to read the encrypted information.

I just need VPN access so I can work from the coffee shop, what should I do?

You’re in luck, our VPN Plan was designed with you in mind. Just sign up for that and you’re off to the races.

How do I sign up?

You can Sign Up online right now! If you’ve got more questions or want test WonderProxy out, request a free trial.

What are proxy tokens?

Proxy tokens replace passwords in your proxy and VPN credentials. Using a proxy token keeps your website credentials safer, and allows administrators additional configuration options. Proxy tokens are part of our Delegated Authentication system.

Can I use proxy tokens with automated software?

Yes! Just stick them in the password field of the proxy or VPN configuration. Depending on your use case, you may want to work with one of your account administrators to create a token that lives longer than usual.

Can I use my password rather than a token?

Passwords for proxy and VPN authentication will be deprecated eventually. Please reach out to support if you feel your use case doesn't work well with proxy tokens.

How do you use cookies?

We use cookies in two ways:

1. To provide basic website features

   The cookies we use to provide basic features are controlled by WonderProxy, and are required to allow things like logging in. Without these cookies, you will not be able to sign up and use our services. WonderProxy's cookies are only used on the WonderProxy website. The proxy services we provide do not use any cookies.

2. To track usage for business analytics

   Our tracking cookies are supplied by a third party analytics package (currently Clicky or Google Analytics). We use these cookies to track our users' use of the site in hopes of better understanding customer behaviour and of increasing sales (yay!). Apart from tracking the pages that you visit, if you sign up for WonderProxy, we also send Google Analytics your customer ID. Google cannot use your WonderProxy customer ID to figure out who you are: it just helps us understand how our paying customers came to our site and signed up.

What is your refund policy?

Should you discover in a timely fashion, and minimal usage, that WonderProxy is not suitable for your testing needs, contact us and we will at our discretion close your account and provide a refund. Should you forget to cancel your subscription and are charged for a service you no longer need please contact us promptly for a refund to your most recent payment.

Servers

Where are your servers located?

We have servers in 260 locations. You can view a comprehensive list as well as a map visualization of our server locations.

What happens if one of your servers goes down?

You're developers, so we know you need up-to-date information about what's happening on our network. If something stops working, you need to know if it's your app, your browser, or our proxy network. During any outage we'll try to keep you in the loop through mastodon or our network status page.

Why on earth would you admit a server was down publicly?

This way when something breaks you know if it’s us, your app, or your test bench. We’re developers too; we understand you want accurate information fast, with a minimum of hoops to jump through. We understand that most hosts like to hide this information and turn getting it into an epic quest. We find it much simpler to be upfront and admit problems.

What happens if I go over my traffic limit?

You’re billed an overage amount, per extra gigabyte. If you know in advance you’re going to need more bandwidth contact support; we can negotiate a much better rate when these things are done ahead of time.

Can you disable my account when I hit my limit?

Not yet, but we have a bunch of tools that will help you keep an eye on your traffic:

• Your account dashboard shows you up-to-the-hour traffic through all your servers, from all your users.
• You can turn on usage notifications to get an email when you're close to your limit.
• On our Team plan and higher, you can also get daily or weekly traffic reports with a summary of all your usage.

Do you sell dedicated/private proxy servers?

We do not sell "dedicated proxy servers". We can make dedicated exit IPs available to customers on our enterprise plan for an additional fee if their security team requires it.

Can I use your proxies to test connection speed or latency?

You can, but it's complicated. Normally when you visit a website on your computer, your traffic tries to take shortest possible route between your computer and the computer hosting the website. When you add a proxy server in the middle, your traffic goes from your computer, to the proxy server, to the computer hosting the website (and comes back the same way). That extra step usually slows down the connection. If you want to do latency testing with a proxy server, you need to know the latency between your computer and the proxy, and subtract it from the latency for the whole trip.

Alternatively, you can check out our Where's It Up? API, which is built specifically for that kind of testing!

Privacy

Do you monitor what we’re doing?

The server logs requests for billing purposes. The logged information includes: Time, IP of the client, URL of the resource requested, and size of the response. You can read an explanation of what data we receive and how we process it in our Squid log parsing blog post.

Is it anonymous?

Not by design. All of our proxies run on several ports. On port 10000 the proxy adds the appropriate X-Forwarded-For and Via headers to the requests and then hit/miss headers to the responses. On port 11000 the proxy no longer adds any headers to the requests it forwards, but still adds them to the responses. Finally on port 12000 the proxy will not add any headers to the requests and will only add error type headers to the responses.

Do you share my personal data with anyone?

Please see our Privacy Policy for complete information. The brief version (with no legal standing) is that we will do our best to protect your personal information and will not share it with others. We may use or share aggregated data (such as the total amount of traffic on our network) for various means. We also use Clicky and Google Analytics for website analytics. We send Google Analytics your WonderProxy user id to help us understand our users better. You can read more about this under How do you use cookies?

Do you restrict the content that can be used with the proxy?

We do not impose any restrictions, however, you are required to comply with the laws and regulations that apply to your location, the location of the proxy, and the location of the machine you are accessing.

Do you inject ads into pages or display them on top?

Neither, this is a paid service. We don’t modify the pages you’re looking at.

Security

Do you have a SOC2 audit report?

Yes! Our most recent SOC 2, Type 2 audit window closed February 1 2024. Our auditor was Prescient Assurance. If you're interested in reviewing our SOC 2 report please reach out to sales.

Do you do routinely have third-party security audits performed?

Yes! We work with an external security company annually. We've worked with the fine folks at Cure53 for several years. In scope services include: our website, website infrastructure, proxy & vpn infrastructure, DNS, and our browser plugin WonderSwitcher.

Does your staff routinely take security awareness training?

We do. All employees and contractors take (endure?) annual general security awareness training, as well as role specific training.

What information do you record?

We receive all the information you give us when creating accounts (usernames, email addresses, password, etc.), when using the proxy network we also see the domain you're connecting to, and how much traffic you've transferred. If you're connecting to an HTTP (rather than HTTPS) server we see slightly more. We do not MiTM your traffic, so we're unable to view any encrypted transfers. We have a detailed explanation of what we see when using the proxy network on our Your Data page.