Access Mobile Applications Through SafeSquid

From Secure Web Gateway
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Overview

If your company/institution allows you to access the internet only via a proxy server, that adds an extra bit of complication for you to use any application that uses internet. The easiest work around for this is to set the relevant environment variables for the different protocols so that they take effect system wide.

Prerequisites

Most of mobile applications will not work without direct Internet connection ( Means you have blocked the access to the IP address of the mobile on your firewall/router ) to the mobile.

What is direct INTERNET connection:
    If you are using firewall, then there is a option to block  the Internet access to the specific IP addresses
    If you block the Internet connection to the specific IP addresses(which is client IP / Mobile IP addresses ), on your firewall  then you are unable to access the Internet without setting proxy settings in that client machine(or) mobile device.
    By default all devices are allowed to access the Internet

Working of Mobile Applications with Proxy

If there is no direct Internet access to the mobiles, And you configured proxy in the mobile, then some of the applications will work through proxy, as they designed such that to use proxy settings. And some of the applications will not work.

why?

Do Android proxy settings apply to all apps on the device

Example :

IP of my mobile : 192.168.27.60
    
Case 1: Direct Internet Connection Allowed for 192.168.27.60 on my firewall

    In this case it is not possible to block applications through proxy, even though you configured the mobile to use proxy settings and entries were created to block that applications.
    Because the applications will not use the proxy settings, they use the direct access to send or receive messages.

Case 2: Direct Internet Connection Blocked for 192.168.27.60 on my firewall

    In this case it is not possible to allow some of the applications to work with proxy, even though if you configure the proxy settings in the mobile. Because the applications not using proxy and looking for Internet access directly.       


Note : The same scenario is applicable In transparent mode also.

References

1. How mobile apps work with proxy