1. A system for proxy-based privacy protection, comprising: one or more proxy servers, each of the proxy servers comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising program code and a computer processor coupled to the storage medium and configured to execute the code to perform steps of: receiving from at least one computing device associated with a user one or more requests to provide a webpage stored on at least one target server, wherein the at least one computing device is configured to display to the user a visual rendering of each of the requested webpages; for each of the requests, retrieving the requested webpage from the target server; for each of the retrieved webpages, parsing the webpage into one or more elements, creating the visual rendering of the webpage based on one or more of the parsed elements, and identifying visual components of the webpage in the visual rendering, the visual components comprising at least one of text and one or more images, that are present in the in the visual rendering when the visual rendering is displayed; for each of the parsed webpages, creating using one or more of the visual components identified in the visual rendering for that webpage a representation of a version of the parsed webpage reconstructed without one or more of the visual components identified in the rendering for that webpage; for each of the representations, providing by one of the proxy servers the representation to the computing device, wherein the computing device displays the reconstructed version of the webpage comprising one or more of the visual components using the representation for that webpage and the displayed reconstructed version differs from the visual representation of the webpage; analyzing the requested webpages; deriving one or more characteristics of the user based on the analysis; creating a profile of the user, the profile comprising the derived characteristics; and storing the profile in a storage interfaced to the proxy servers.