You might easily fall victim to a false sense of anonymity on the internet. After all, in a virtual world, how can anyone know who you really are? In actuality, sharing information about your computer, location, and even the websites you visit happens just by connecting to the Internet.
The purpose of anonymous Web browsing is to avoid the tracking technologies that could potentially reveal your personal information to third parties by not using them. No one can tell who you are, where you’re connecting from, or which websites you are accessing while you browse anonymously.
When considering using an anonymous web browser, people immediately think of extramarital affairs, harmful hacking, illicit downloading, and other sinister habits. That might not always be the case. There are actually a lot of good reasons to want to hide your identity online, including the following:
As you’ll find in the following section, browsing the Web secretly is more difficult than simply clearing your browser’s history. Learn more about how IP addresses and computer networks can reveal your identity.
Your computer has a distinct Internet Protocol (IP) address, as does every other device connected to the Internet. Your IP address could be dynamic or it might not vary each time you access the internet. In either case, each time you browse the Web, a special identity is attach to you.
It take an IP address for the Internet to function. It is basically your computer’s address on a huge computer network. Just like a single home on a busy street. A Web server can only deliver content from a Web page to your browser if it is aware of your computer’s network address.
IP addresses do not by themselves contain any information that can be used to identify you personally. However, if you have an Internet Service Provider (ISP) subscription, which is how the majority of us access the Internet, your ISP will be able to quickly connect your IP address to your name, home address, phone number, email address, and even credit card details.
Generally speaking, ISPs have fairly tight privacy standards, so resist the urge to get paranoid. Your private information won’t be provided to just anyone who requests it. But under regulations similar to those in the U.S. An ISP may be forced to provide personal information associate with an IP address under the Patriot Act and in response to subpoenas from the police and federal agencies.
Another method for an outside source to monitor your Web browsing patterns is through cookies. When you visit a website, your web browser saves a small text file call a cookie. Your login information, user preferences, the items in your online shopping cart, and other identifiers may be found in the file. These cookies enhance the customization and personalization of your web browsing. They are made to make your visits to your favorite websites faster. Additionally, they’re made to assist advertising in modifying their communications to suit your individual interests.
First-party cookies are those that have been stored on your browser by websites you have visited. Cookies from third parties, such as advertisers and other organizations with whom the website you visited has data-sharing agreements, are those that are saved on your computer. The fact that you have no control over who gathers information about you makes third-party cookies a particularly egregious infringement of privacy in the eyes of many people.
We’ll look closely at how con artists can utilize an online data trail to piece together your identity in the part that follows.
Although cookies and IP addresses by themselves might not reveal any personal information about you, when these hints are combined with other Web browsing information, such as your search history, you run the risk of unintentionally disclosing your identity to hackers, con artists, or law enforcement officials.
Your IP address is usually stored in search engine caches along with search queries. Search results are retained by Google for nine months and by MSN for 18 months [source: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse]. It is feasible to determine someone’s identity by looking at hundreds or thousands of search queries coming from the same IP address, especially if they searched for maps using their home location or provided their Social Security number.
Web e-mail accounts pose another risk to internet privacy. When you go online, you can be leaving a very clear trail for hackers and other cybercriminals to follow if you use the same website for both your email account and Internet searches.
For instance, if you use Gmail.com to access your email, you must log in each time you check your inbox. While logge into your email account, any Google Web searches you make will be link to the same IP address as your email account. A hacker or other third party might then easily link your searches to your email address and exploit that information to send you personalized spam or other email scams.
Viewing the history on your web browser is the simplest and most direct way for someone to monitor your web browsing. Every website you visit is record chronologically by your web browser. Your browsing history will typically be saved for at least a week by default in most Web browsers. Anyone could open their browser and look through their history if they wanted to keep an eye on their Web browsing.
Your boss does not have to physically turn on your computer in order to view your browser history if you are using a business computer to browse the Internet. Your employer has the right to keep an eye on the websites you visit as you are using the office network.
In the next section, we’ll talk about anonymous proxy servers, one of the most effective ways to hide your identity online.
Your computer sends a request to a web server each time you enter a URL into a web browser and press Enter, and the web server subsequently returns the requested Web page to you. The Web server needs your IP address in order to accomplish this. So much for surfing in secret, huh?
Not necessarily: Using a proxy server is one approach to prevent giving your IP address to each Web server you communicate with. A machine known as a proxy server stands between you and the rest of the Internet. You must first go via the proxy server for each web request you make.
A unique type of proxy server call an anonymous proxy server is outfitte with software that removes your IP address. From any page requests and replaces it with its own. The proxy server then forwards the page to you after receiving it from the Web server, devoid of any additional software programs that might betray your identity.
Web-based proxies are the most often use sort of anonymous proxy servers. Simply visit the proxy service’s website, type the desired URL into a special address box, and the service will route your request to the web server anonymously.
The use of anonymous proxy servers has various drawbacks. The proxy server must process each incoming and departing page, which sometimes causes lengthy page loading delays. Additionally, many pages will load incorrectly because the proxy server makes an effort to remove or bypass any suspicious parts on the returned Web page.
Use a reputable Web proxy with a transparent privacy policy. There have been instances of malicious hackers setting up false anonymous Web proxies to gather data from unknowing customers. Hackers can view usernames, passwords, and other personal information when you utilize a proxy server because the data frequently goes unencrypted [source: WhatIsMyIPAddress.com].
Additionally, stay away from so-call “open proxies,” which are proxy servers. Tthat assert to have been mistakenly left “open” for a variety of reasons after being abandone. In order to collect personally identifying information, malicious hackers often use these proxies as booby traps. Some open proxies are actually residing on the machines of unknowing victims of computer virus infection.
It’s time to verify your Web browser settings now that you understand how to conceal your IP address online.
Although anonymous proxy servers are an excellent technique to hide your IP address online, your computer still stores a lot of data about your Web browsing behavior. Fortunately, you can easily modify your privacy settings within your Web browser.
Delete your browser history manually for one of the simplest ways to hide your online activity. You may remove your web browsing history on any web browser, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.
Follow these instructions to delete your browser history:
However, keep in mind that even if you delete your browsing history from your computer, any network administrator, whether at the office or even at your ISP, can view it on the network.
Your browser’s handling of cookies is also under your control. The majority of browsers accept cookies from all websites by default. Either you may opt to only block third-party cookies, which may prohibit you from utilizing some online banking and shopping services, or you can completely disable cookies.
Since anonymous Web surfing is becoming more and more popular, the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome include special settings for surfing without a trace. By enabling these settings, your browser won’t save your surfing history, search queries, cookies, download history, or passwords.
Here is how you activate anonymous surfing in some of the more popular Web browsers:
In the next section, we’ll talk about ways to get around the thorny problem of Web sites that force you to register.
You must register on a lot of pay and free websites before accessing their services. Three fundamental items are often need for this: an active email account. A username, and a password.
A lot of people simply don’t want every website they visit to know who they are or how to reach them, aside from the security hazards of providing your email address and other personally identifiable information to a random website.
Experts advise against using the same username and password to access all of your Web sites and services for security reasons. The risk, of course, is that one of these websites would unintentionally or maliciously give your information to identity thieves who will use it to access your online bank account or other highly sensitive Web services using your universal username and password.
Another irritant is the ease with which many websites sell your personal data to unaffiliated companies, who then flood your inbox with spam. You can choose not to get emails from partners on some websites, but it’s not always obvious which choices to click or uncheck.
You may always create numerous email accounts using free services like Yahoo! Mail or Google Mail if you don’t want to reveal your real email address to every website that asks for registration. It’s acceptable if you never check the email account again because, for the majority of Web sites, the only true use of the email address is to confirm registration.
However, avoid creating an Excel or Word file and saving it on your computer if you register with numerous websites and want to keep track of all of your various usernames, passwords, and email addresses. It would be easy for someone to take your identity if they were able to access that file.
Using a safe, web-based service like ShopShield or Anonymizer is a preferable choice. For any website you choose, these services will automatically create temporary e-mail addresses with customized usernames and passwords. Every time a fresh email is receive at one of these temporary addresses. Iit is check for spam and viruses before being transferr to your actual email address. Additionally, deleting undesirable accounts is as simple as clicking a button.
A creative alternative is a website BugMeNot.com, where users can submit free usernames and passwords for shared access to well-known websites including news sites and video sharing portals. A username and password are remove from the list if they stop working.
For lots more information about online privacy and the mechanics of the Internet, follow the links on the next page.
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Darnell Hatfield (@DarnellHatfiel4) says:
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