Proxy Legal Issues

Creating a proxy can make you money, or make you lose all your money. There have been several people I know to make successful proxy servers and make some good money from it. There have been a handfull of people who have had their payment stopped, had to pay for damages, or even goto jail.

Some things to watch out for when setting up a proxy:

1. Make sure it is legal in your country. Many countries, China being a huge one, outlaw proxies and proxy use. No everyone is blessed enough to live in a free society and have the freedoms that we have.

2. Make sure that running a proxy on your host alligns with their TOS. This is probably the biggest mistake people make when setting up a proxy for the first time. Most hosts will simply suspend or shut off your service but depending on the host's terms of service, many can hold you liable for damages: hogging CPU time and bandwidth.

3. Don't use Adsense on the browsed pages. Many online advertisers restrict putting their ads on proxy pages. Google Adsense is one of them. Adsense can be a great source of revenue, but only on the main page of the proxy. Be aware also that Adsense requires some content on the page as well. Throwing Adsense on a page with no content is a surefire way to get yout account banned. Read every TOS seriously.

There are a few other things to keep in mind. Since you are basically running an open gateway for anyone to type in anything, what would happen if a 12 year old with perental control at a library came accross your server and accessed something he was not supposed to? Situations like this could be tramatic, so always protect yourself with a terms of service document.