Now, admittedly use of an anonymous proxy does kind of lead to some questions such as "what do you have to hide?" but in a lot of cases the person in question may simply be worried about their privacy in this particuarly web-paranoid age.

With more and more in the media about people's details being stolen or spied on online it's no wonder that a lot of people turn to anonymous proxies in an attempt to protect themselves and not because what they wish to do is neferious.

Proxies per-say certainly aren't a reason to set alarm bells ringing as I myself had to configure LWP to use one the other day - not because I wanted to do anything "dodgy" but purely because the company I work at uses one and no HTTP traffic will route without it (writing a simple app to check some of my pop3 and webmail accounts without the trauma of having to log into each in turn everytime I want to know if I have mail).

I'd agree that, in cases like this, it would be preferable to get a more complete explanation of both what is to be achieved and why. For a start, if it is completely innocent / legal then there may be better / simpler ways of acheiving the same ends, but it's a little difficult to advise when you don't know the full picture.

The monks here are by nature cautious so if you can explain and justify your motives then I'm sure everyone will be happy to help :)