Web Proxy

A proxy that focuses on the World Wide Web traffic referred to as "web proxy". The most frequently used web proxy is to serve as a web cache. Most proxy programs provide a way to deny access to the URL specified in the blacklist, thus providing the content filtering. This is often used in corporate, education or library environment, and other places where the desired content filtering. Some web proxies reformat web pages for a particular purpose or audience, such as for mobile phones and PDAs.

AOL dialup customers used to have their requests forwarded through the extensible proxy 'thinning' or reduce the detail images in JPEG format. This accelerated performance but cause trouble, either when more resolution is needed or when the thinning program produced incorrect results. This is why in the early days of the web many web pages will contain a link that says "AOL Users Click Here" to bypass web proxy and to avoid bugs in the thinning software.