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Most of us doesn’t want to leave a footprint behind while surfing the Internet. Reasons for that are aplenty. We may not want the other person to know our Geographical location. To avoid being traced by someone for personal reasons. For not being followed by advertising websites. To avoid from getting your system hacked and many more.
There are many options to achieve the above, I will list a few and the most preferred and the BEST options for you. In below are the options through which you can surf the internet being absolutely anonymous.
How can I be anonymous online?
1. TOR
2. PRIVATE PROXY
3. VPN
TOR- This is the second generation of Onion routing network. This is a Free software and can be used by anyone. If you want the ultimate protection against identity disclosure in the net available, this is the software for you. This software works by encrypting your data request over the network form point to point routers within Tor netwok and hence if also intercepted in the middle it is virtually impossible to decrypt using normal resources. This also protects your location identity as it is maintained by its users. What it does is in simple language that, when you make a request a to server A it will first connect to another user who is also routing for the network and then from his router it will send the original request. So when the request is traced it will show the other users location and not yours. However since it depends on the users bandwidth sharing, it is somewhat slow to use. However it is more secured than other process providing similar facility. It can be used with Mozilla and many other browsers. If you want to download it now.
PRIVATE PROXY- Private proxy is another means to keep yourself anonymous. However much care should be taken while choosing a proxy as if its not done so, it will start working against you instead of with you. And according to my suggestion Free proxy randomly taken from the internet should not be used while transferring secured data. As most of them are maintained by hackers and other criminal outfits. Even if there are good ones there is no way you would find the differences between the two. If you want to secure yourself, consider buying cheap rotating proxies from a trusted ip4 proxy store that has user reviews and a solid reputation on the web.
How Can It Harm Me?
Suppose you have taken a free proxy from the internet just by simply searching it over internet, and you are making a payment through your card. Now understand what happens, when you make a request to submit your card details onto a shopping site, your data moves from your computer to the proxy server and then to the shopping site server. In case the proxy is a good proxy then it is okay. However if it maintained by a hacker he can easily log your card details and use it for malicious purposes.
So How Do I Protect Myself?
It would be the safest to purchase a private proxy from a authorized legal seller or reseller. And also don’t forget to read the terms and conditions for their services before signing up.
VPN– VPN or Virtual Private Network, is another way of being anonymous on the internet. It is also a FREE service (Paid Are Also Available) , which works great and there is also no bandwidth issue as you won’t probably find and speed difference while surfing the Internet. Its works as its name suggest by making a virtual private network of all the computer in use. In this case also the traffic originating from your computer to the website is encrypted hence very less chance of revealing details. And your geographical location is also not compromised as the server on the other end would only get the IP address of the VPN server and not yours. This is the best way to surf the Internet in anonymity and without and considerable change in surfing speed.
From my part I can suggest to use Hotspot Shield VPN. Its FREE and also have all the above features and is easy to use. Download
Note: A 256 bit encryption of a password would take approximately 20 years or more if tried to decrypt using the highest configured personal computer. However if the same is tried with a supercomputer like The Thinking Machine or The Cray, it would take only a second to decrypt. These computers are with FBI and many other government agencies. So in case if you want to use the above features for illegal purposes, be sure, it can’t protect you.
If you want to know more about how to protect your computer online, you can read my previous post about it.
