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What's the difference between a proxy and a VPN (midwest.social)

submitted 2 years ago by comma_egomaniac@midwest.social to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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I'm going to need an ELI5 because I have read several explanations online, and I still don't fully understand what makes them different. Why would you want to use one over the other? Don't they both just forward your internet traffic? How do they work, in general?

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[–] takeheart@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Never knew about transparent web proxies. Neat. Do they play a part in commercial DDOS protection? I'm thinking of those please wait while we're evaluating your request messages that you get on some sites. But also about any methods used to prove that you are human.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Do they play a part in commercial DDOS protection?

Absolutely! As well as mitigating other types of threats. "Web Application Firewalls" (don't be fooled, they're not like regular firewalls really) are a type of transparent web proxy that watch requests for anything that "looks like" a SQL injection or XSS payload and block those requests if necessary. Transparent web proxies may also do things like caching or even "honeypot" functionality that may shunt likely bot traffic to a fake version of the website to prevent scraping of real site content.