How to Surf the Web Anonymously

The Internet has a way of lulling you into a false sense of anonymity. After all, how can anyone know your
true identity in a virtual world? The truth is that simply by connecting to the Internet, you share information
about your computer, your geographical location and even about the Web sites you visit.
The goal of anonymous Web surfing is to circumvent the technologies that track your online activity and
may potentially expose your personal information to others. By surfing anonymously, no one knows who
you are, where you're connecting from or what sites you are visiting.

When people think of surfing the Web anonymously, they automatically associate it with extramarital
affairs, malicious hacking, illegal downloading and other sordid behaviors. That's not necessarily the
case. In fact, there are many legitimate reasons why someone would wish to remain anonymous online:

 Your employer or school has strict Web surfing policies and filters your access to the Internet.
 You're a staunch free speech advocate and don't want the government or anyone else to
censor your activities.
 You believe that the Internet is the perfect forum in which to express your opinions freely
without fear of being harassed or tracked down by people who don't agree with those
opinions.
 You believe the Bill of Rights and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
empowers you to conduct your private business without outside intrusion.
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Registry
 You live abroad and want to access streaming video content that's only available to people
living in your home country.
 You don't like the idea that search engines are collecting information about your queries.
 You don't want online advertisers to know where you live or what products you buy.
 You want to participate anonymously in Internet forums, perhaps to speak to other people
about a private medical condition or to discuss 
As you'll see in the next section, surfing the Web anonymously isn't as easy as erasing your browser
history. Learn more about computer networks and IP addresses and how they can expose your identity.
IP Addresses and Cookies

©iStockphoto.com/A330Pilot
Cookies can track your browsing history to help personalize your online shopping experience.
Every machine connected to the Internet has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address, including your
computer. You may have a static IP address or it may change each time you go online. Either way, you
are tagged with a unique identifier every time you surf the Web.
An IP address is necessary for the Internet to work. It is literally the address of your personal computer
on a vast computer network -- like a single house on a crowded street. The only way a Web servercan
send the contents of a Web page to your browser is if it has your computer's address on the network.
IP addresses, in and of themselves, do not contain any personally identifiable information about you.
However, if you're signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) -- which is the way most of us get our
Internet service -- then your ISP can easily link your IP address with your name, home address, phone
number, e-mail address and even credit card information.
Don't get paranoid just yet: In general, ISPs have fairly strict privacy policies. They won't give out your
personal information to any random person who asks for it. However, under laws like the U.S. Patriot Act
and through subpoenas from the police and federal agencies, an ISP may have no choice but to supply
personal information related to an IP address.

Cookies are another way for an outside source to track your Web surfing habits. Cookies are tiny text
files that are saved in your Web browser when you visit a Web site. The file might contain your login
information, your user preferences, the contents of your online shopping cart and other identifiers. These
cookies make your Web browsing experience more personalized and customizable. They're designed to
save you time when you visit your favorite sites. They're also designed to help advertisers tailor their
messages to your personal preferences.
First-party cookies are cookies left on your browser from Web sites you visited. Third-party
cookies are files stored on your computer from advertisers and other parties that have information-
sharing agreements with the site you visited. Many people find third-party cookies to be a particularly
egregious breach of privacy, since you have no control over who collects information about you.
In the next section, we'll taker a close look at how scam artists can use an online data trail to piece
together your identity. 

Piecing Together Your Online Identity

You Are What You Search

In 2006, AOL posted 20 million of its users' search
histories for research purposes. Each search history
was tagged with a number, not a name. Still, journalists
were able to successfully deduce the identity of several
of these "numbers" simply from examining their search
queries. More than 100 people had searched for their
Social Security numbers [source: Privacy Rights
Clearinghouse].
Cookies and IP addresses alone may not give away your personal information, but when these clues are
combined with other Web surfing data -- like your search history -- you could unwittingly disclose your
identity to hackers, scam artists or government investigators.
Search engines routinely store search queries associated with your IP address. Google stores search
queries for nine months and MSN stores them for 18 months [source: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse]. By
examining hundreds or thousands of search queries from the same IP address, it's possible to deduce
someone's identity, particularly if they have done map searches on their home address or entered their
Social Security number.
Another threat to online privacy involves Web e-mail accounts. If you use the same Web site for both your
e-mail service and Internet searches, you might be leaving a very clear trail for hackers and
cybercriminals to follow when you go online.
For example, if you use Google as your e-mail provider, then you need to log in to Gmail.com for each e-
mail session. Any Google Web searches you conduct while logged in to your e-mail account will be
associated with the same IP address as your e-mail account. From there, it would be easy for a hacker or
other third party to associate your searches with your e-mail address -- and to use this information to send
you customized spam or other e-mail scams.

The simplest and most direct way for someone to track your Web surfing is to view the history on your
Web browser. Your Web browser keeps a chronological list of every Web site you visit. Most Web
browsers will save your browsing history for at least a week by default. If someone wanted to monitor your
Web surfing, all that person would have to do is open your browser and search your history.

If you're surfing the Web from a work computer, your boss doesn't need to physically turn on your
computer and check your browser history. Since you're working on an office network, your employer has
the right to monitor what sites you are visiting.

In the next section, we'll talk about anonymous proxy servers, one of the most effective ways to hide your 

Anonymous Proxy Servers

Every time you type a URL into your Web browser and click Enter, your computer sends a request to
aWeb server, which then delivers the Web page back to you. To do this, the Web server needs to know
your IP address. So much for surfing anonymously, right?
Not necessarily: One way to avoid revealing your IP address to every Web server you contact is to use a
proxy server. A proxy server is a machine that sits between you and the rest of the Internet. Every page
request you make goes through the proxy server first.
An anonymous proxy server is a special kind of proxy loaded with software that erases your IP address
from any page requests and substitutes its own. When the page is sent back by the Web server, the
proxy server then forwards it along to you free of any additional software scripts that might compromise
your identity.
The most popular kind of anonymous proxy servers are Web-based proxies. All you have to do is go to
the Web site of the proxy service, enter the desired URL in a special address box and the service will
relay the request to the Web server anonymously.

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 that you use a recognized Web proxy with a clear privacy policy. There have been cases of
malicious hackers who have set up phony anonymous Web proxies to collect information from unwitting
clients. When you use a proxy server, the information often travels unencrypted, allowing hackers to see
things like usernames, passwords and other sensitive information [source: WhatIsMyIPAddress.com].
You should also avoid so-called "open proxies." These are proxy servers that claim to have been
abandoned and accidentally left "open" for one reason or another. Many of these proxies are booby traps
set up by malicious hackers who want to steal personally identifiable information. Some open proxies are
actually living on the computers of unwitting users who have been infected by a computer virus.

Now that you know how to hide your IP address online, it's time to check your Web browser settings.
Privacy Settings in Your Browser

There are many easy and effective ways to preserve your online anonymity.
Anonymous proxy servers are a great way to mask your IP addressonline, but there is still plenty of
information about your Web surfing habits stored on your computer. Luckily, it's easy to control your
privacy settings directly in your Web browser.
One of the simplest ways to cover your online tracks is to manually delete your browser history. All Web
browsers -- like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome -- allow you to delete your Web
surfing history. 
Follow these instructions to delete your browser history:

 In Safari, go to the History menu, scroll all the way down to the bottom and click "Clear
History."
 In Firefox, open the Preferences box from the Firefox menu. Choose the Privacy tab. Go
down to the section on Private Data and click "Clear Now."
 In Google Chrome, go to the Tools menu, select "History," select a recent Web site and click
"Delete history for this day."
 In Internet Explorer 7 and 8, this process is a little more complicated. Go to
support.microsoft.com and follow the directions there for assistance.
Note, however, that any network administrator -- at the office or even at your ISP -- can access your
surfing history on the network level, even if you erase it on your computer.

You can also control how your browser handles cookies. The default setting on most browsers is to
accept cookies from all sites. You can either block cookies entirely -- which might prevent you from using
certain online banking and shopping sites -- or you can choose only to block third-party 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 the more popular Web browsers:

 In Internet Explorer 8, open a new tab and select "Browse with InPrivate."
 In Safari, under the main Safari menu, you can check a setting called "Private Browsing."
 In Google Chrome, click on the page icon next to the URL window and select "Open New
Incognito Window."
In the next section, we'll talk about ways to get around the thorny problem of Web sites that force you to
register.

Anonymous Registration
Many free and subscription Web sites require you to register before using their services. This usually
requires three basic things: an active e-mail address, a username and a password.
Aside from the security risks of giving your e-mail address and other personally identifiable information to
a random Web site, a lot of people simply don't want every Web site they visit to know who they are, and
certainly not how to contact them.

For security purposes, experts recommend that you don't use the same username and password to
access all of your Web sites and services. The danger, of course, is that one of these sites will -- either
maliciously or accidentally -- hand your information over to identity thieves who will use your universal
username and password to access your online bank account or other highly sensitive Web services.
Another annoyance is that many Web sites have no problem with selling your information to third parties
who will then load your inbox with spam. Some sites allow you to opt out of receiving e-mails from
partners, but it isn't always clear which boxes to check or uncheck.
If you don't want to give your real e-mail address to every Web site that requires registration, you can
always create multiple e-mail accounts using free services like Yahoo! Mail or Google Mail. For most Web
sites, the only real purpose of the e-mail address is to confirm registration, so it's OK if you never check
the e-mail account again.
However, if you register with many different Web sites and want to keep track of all of your different
usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses, don't create an Excel or Word file and save it on your
computer. If someone is able to access that file, they'd have more than enough information to steal your
identity.

A better solution is to use a secure, Web-based service like ShopShield or Anonymizer. These services
automatically generate temporary e-mail addresses with unique usernames and passwords for any site
you wish. Whenever a new e-mail message is received at one of these temporary accounts, it is scrubbed
for viruses and spam and then forwarded to your real e-mail address. You can also delete unwanted
accounts with a click of a button.

Another clever solution is a Web site called BugMeNot.com, in which users post free usernames and
passwords for shared access to popular Web sites like newspapers and video sharing sites. If a
username and password stops working, it is voted down the list.

For lots more information about online privacy and the mechanics of the Internet, follow the links on the
next page.

Lots More Information

Related Articles
 How to Avoid Spyware
 How to Scan For and Remove Spyware
 How to Protect Against Identity Theft

 How to Avoid Facebook Scams

 How to Clean Your Computer's Registry
Sources
 Barbaro, Michael and Zeller, Tom. "A Face is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749." New
York Times, August 9, 2006 (Accessed June 5, 2009)
 Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Privacy and the Internet: Traveling in Cyberspace Safely"
(May 19, 2009)
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs18-cyb.htm
 Proxy.org. "Your right to anonymity" (May 19, 2009)
http://proxy.org/
 Shop Shield. "Anonymous Registration" (May 19, 2009)
http://www.shopshield.net/secure_registration.html?source=top_menu
 WhatismyIPaddress.com. "Internet Anonymity" (May 19, 2009)
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/internet-anonymity
 WhatismyIPaddress.com. "What is a Proxy Server?" (May 19, 2009)
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/proxy-server