Surfing the Web Anonymously

 

Surfing the web anonymously...?

The Internet has a way of fooling you into thinking you're anonymous. After all, how can someone in a virtual world know your true identity? Simply connecting to the Internet allows you to exchange information about your device, your geographic location, and even the Web pages you visit.

The aim of anonymous Web browsing is to avoid being tracked online by technology that could potentially reveal your personal details to others. No one knows who you are, where you're interacting from, or what places you're visiting when you surf anonymously. 

When people think of anonymous Web browsing, they immediately think of extramarital affairs, malicious hacking, illicit downloading, and other nefarious activities. That is not always the case. There are a variety of valid reasons why someone may want to remain anonymous online. Any of them may include: 

• You feel that the Internet is the ideal platform for openly expressing your views without fear of being threatened or tracked down by those who disagree..
• You don't like the concept of search engines gathering data about your searches.
• You don't want online marketers to know your location or what you purchase.
• You want to engage in Internet forums anonymously, maybe to talk to other people about a private medical condition or to discuss a topic with others.

As you'll see below, browsing the web anonymously isn't as easy as deleting your search history. Let's look at how computer networks and IP addresses will reveal your personal information. 

Any machine (computer or smartphone) connected to the Internet, including yours, has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. 

You might have a fixed IP address or one that changes each time you log on to the internet. Any time you visit the Internet, you are assigned a unique identifier. 

IP Address and Cookies are part of the game
The Internet cannot function without an IP address. It's like a single house on a crowded street: it's the address of your personal computer or smartphone on a vast computer network. A Web server will only submit the contents of a Web page to your browser if it knows your computer's network address. 

IP addresses do not contain any personally identifying information about you in and of themselves. If you're a subscriber to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is how most of us get Internet access, your ISP can easily connect your IP address to your name, home address, phone number, e-mail address, and even credit card details. 

ISPs, on the whole, have fairly stringent privacy policies. They will not give out your personal details to just anyone who asks. However, under laws such as the USA Patriot Act and subpoenas from law enforcement and federal agencies, an ISP can be forced to provide personal details associated with an IP address. 

Another way for an outside source to monitor your Web browsing habits is through cookies. When you visit a website, your Web browser saves a small text file called a cookie. Your login credentials, user preferences, the contents of your online shopping cart, and other identifiers can be stored in the file. These cookies allow you to customize and personalize your Web browsing experience. They're made to help you save time when you go to your favorite websites. They're also intended to assist marketers in customizing their ads to your specific tastes. 

Cookies left on your computer from websites you've visited are known as first-party cookies. Advertisers and other parties that have information-sharing arrangements with the site you visited place third-party cookies on your machine. Many people believe that third-party cookies are an especially egregious invasion of privacy because you have no influence over who gathers information about you. 

Scam Artists 
Do you know what Scam Artists are? Hackers are another term for these people. They can put together your identity using an online data trail. How do you do it? Allow me to elaborate.... 

Cookies and IP addresses by themselves do not reveal personal details, but when combined with other Web browsing data, such as your search history, you may unintentionally reveal your identity to hackers, or scammers. 

Search engines store search queries associated with your IP address on a regular basis. It's possible to deduce someone's identity by looking at hundreds or thousands of search queries from the same IP address, particularly if they've done map searches on their home address or entered their Social Security number. 

Web e-mail accounts are another threat to online privacy. When you use the same Web site for e-mail and Internet searches, you might be leaving a very simple path for hackers and cybercriminals to follow. 

If you use Google  as your email provider, for example, you must log in to Gmail.com for each email session. When logged in to your e-mail account, any Google Web searches you perform would be associated with the same IP address as your e-mail account. From there, a hacker or other third party could easily link your searches to your e-mail address, and use that information to give you personalized spam or other e-mail scams. 

Viewing the history of your Web browser is the easiest and most straightforward way for anyone to monitor your Web browsing. Any Web site you visit is recorded in your browser's history. By default, most Web browsers save your browsing history for at least a week. If anyone decided to keep track of your online activities, all they had to do was open your browser and look at your history. 

Your employer doesn't need to physically turn on your screen to search your browsing history while you're surfing the Web from a work computer. Your boss has the right to track what pages you access when you're on an office network. 

Anonymous Proxy Servers
When you type a URL into your Web browser and press Enter, your machine sends a request to a Web server, which then sends you the requested page. The Web server will use your IP address to do this. So much for surfing in the dark, huh? 

Using a proxy server is one way to avoid exposing your IP address to any Web server you contact. A proxy server is a computer that sits in the middle of the Internet, between you and the rest of the world. Any request for a page is routed via a proxy server first. 

Anonymous proxy server is a form of proxy that uses software to mask your IP address from page requests and replace it with its own. When the Web server returns the page, the proxy server sends it to you without any external software scripts that might compromise your identity. 

Web-based proxies are the most popular form of anonymous proxy server. All you have to do is go to the proxy service's website, type the requested URL into a special address box, and the service will anonymously relay the request to the Web server. 

There are some downsides to anonymous proxy servers. Because each incoming and outgoing page needs to be processed by the proxy server, this can often result in slow page loading times. And since the proxy server attempts to delete or bypass any suspicious elements on the returning Web page, a lot of pages will load with errors. 

Make sure you're using a well-known Web proxy with a transparent privacy policy. Malicious hackers have set up bogus anonymous Web proxies to gather details from unsuspecting clients throughout the past. When you use a proxy server, the data is often sent unencrypted, enabling hackers to see usernames, passwords, and other confidential data. 

Also, stay away from so-called "safe or open proxies." These are proxy servers that appear to have been abandoned and left "open" by mistake for some cause. Many of these proxies are booby traps set up by malicious hackers looking to steal personal data. Open proxies can be found on the machines of unwitting users who have been infected with a computer virus. 

Use Privacy Settings in Your Browser
Anonymous proxy servers are a fantastic way to hide your IP address online, but your machine also stores a lot of details about your Web browsing habits. Fortunately, you can monitor your privacy settings right in your browser. 

Manually deleting your browser history is one of the easiest ways to hide your online tracks. You can erase your browsing history in any Web browser, like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome. 

However, even if you delete your browsing history on your device, every network administrator — at the office or even at your ISP — may access it on the network level. 

You can also control how cookies are handled by your browser. Most browsers are designed to accept cookies from all websites by default. You have the option of blocking all cookies (which can prohibit you from accessing some online banking and shopping sites) or only blocking third-party cookies. 

Since anonymous Web browsing is becoming more common, the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome have special settings for surfing without leaving a trail. If you enable these settings, your browser will not save your browsing history, search requests, cookies, download history, or passwords. 

Tackling Web Sites Forece You to Register
Many free and paid Web sites need registration before you can use their services. Three items are normally required: an active e-mail address, a username, and a password. 

Aside from the security risks of offering a random Web site your e-mail address and other personally identifiable information, many people simply don't want every Web site they visit to know who they are and, more importantly, how to reach them. 

Advise is not to use same username and password for all of your Web sites and services for security reasons. Of course, the risk is that one of these sites will give your details to identity thieves who will use your universal username and password to access your online bank account or other highly confidential Web services, whether maliciously or inadvertently. 

Another irritation is that many websites have no qualms about selling your personal details to third parties, who then spam your inbox. You can opt out of getting e-mails from partners on certain websites, but it's not always obvious which boxes to check or uncheck. 

You can always build several e-mail accounts using free services like Yahoo! Mail or Google Mail if you don't want to send your real e-mail address to any Web site that needs registration. The only real aim of the e-mail address on most Web pages is to confirm registration, so it's fine if you never check it again. 

If you want to keep track of all of your various usernames, passwords, and e-mail addresses, don't make an Excel or Word file and save it on your computer as normal. Secure it with password and store it in a safe place on your machine, because If anyone has access to that file, they'll have all the details they need to steal your identity. 

Another alternative is BugMeNot.com, a website where users can exchange free usernames and passwords for popular websites such as newspapers and video sharing sites. If a username and password are no longer valid, they are removed from the list. 

That's it. Hopefully this will help you to better understand as how internet world works and to be able to take necessary precautions to secure yourself and why it is not easy now a days to hide your identity now a days.