I just read the wikipedia thing and I am so confused. Can a mod allow someone to tell me without getting banned? I seriously have no idea what they are and why we can't talk about them as well?
so it is really a computer on a different network. your computer connects to this other computer and sends all the network traffic over to the other computer. In todays world it is mainly used for illegal usages however it can also be used to protect identity.
they can also be used in a local network. Some/most firewalls use a built in proxy to be able to log and filter the network. For example microsofts firewall (ISA server) relies on this technology to have all the traffic go through the firewall before it goes into the outside world.
I hope this is a good enough description. This was just basics but most people really dont need much more then that.