How to Keep Your Identity Safe on the Internet

Just surfing on the Internet exposes information about you to everyone from your employer (if you're using the web from work) through the people who run the sites you visit. Things such as your IP address and port are known by servers, the content you're looking at, and sometimes even the content you have looked at.

Cookies can legitimately be used to track your location on an individual web site. Cookies can also be used to see where you have been, which ads have been displayed on your machine, and let businesses know your age, sex, name and even address and phone number.

What is Anonymous Browsing?

Anonymous browsing, as its name implies, allows users to connect to web sites, view their content, search, blog, etc. without letting the sites they're visiting know anything about them that isn't necessary. Watch out for filling out forms, though -- you can still give away your identity!

Most Anonymous Browsing services use Proxy Services which allow a user's web browser to connect via an encrypted link to a server at the service provider's location. That server, in turn, re-issues the request to the appropriate site. The site's response is then sent back to the user's web browser via the encrypted link. The whole session is completed without the actual destination's web server being aware of who the requestor is.

Beware!

Once your session is going through one of these anonymous services, it is completely out of your control. You have to trust the service to always provide you with the page you want, to not keep track of your browsing habits, nor would you want it to pass along any of this information to third parties. Some of these proxy services have been known to be launching grounds for hackers to gain control of unsuspecting user's PCs.