Privacy - How To Cover Your Web Surfing Tracks and Internet Presence

When we go Web Surfing or Browsing the Internet with a web browser, we may think it looks like:

                Me  ->  Website

but in fact it is more like

               Me  ->  My Internet Service Provider (ISP)  ->  Website

When a web page appears on your computer, there is no magic - information is passed to and from Me, ISP and Website. Basically, anything about you that can be known, your IP (internet address), location, name you  sign up with, etc, can be obtained by ISP and Website and by others.


There are many valid and legal reasons why people would like to keep their privacy from their ISP and the Websites they visit. So there are ways to Not Reveal to your ISP which websites you visit, and Not Reveal to the Websites where your real location is.

Using VPN

Hotspot Shield - This software connects your computer via a VPN to the servers of HotSpot Shield which then visits the Websites. It looks like this:

               Me  --->           My  ISP              HotSpot Shield Servers -> Website
                              ----> VPN Tunnel ---->

So the Website thinks the visitor came from HotSpot Shield servers, instead of coming from you.
The ISP sees encrypted data and does not know which Website you are requesting to see.

Drawback: Theoretically your information is still known by HotSpot Shield servers. Well you have to trust someone in the end......

Here is a guide to set up VPN in Windows 7
http://www.pcworld.com/article/210562/how_set_up_vpn_in_windows_7.html

VPN Gate - An experimental VPN setup in Japan. Free to join.
http://www.vpngate.net/en/



Using Proxies

From a very high level, proxies work in a similar way to VPN. The key difference is that the traffics is not necessarily encrypted. However, the request to a website is send via another server in the middle, so that the destination website does not know it came from you. Since our information passes through a web proxies, we must trust those web-proxies that we use.

Here are some web-based proxies:
- Proxify - proxify.com

- Anonymouse - anonymouse.org
- Hide My Ass - www.hidemyass.com


There are manual proxy servers which require your browser to be configured to make use of the web proxy. The following sites maintain a list of proxy servers:
- Proxynova - www.proxynova.com
- Hide My Ass - www.hidemyass.com


Other Ways

There are many other ways to cover your tracks. This site http://www.how-to-hide-ip.info/hide-ip-tools/ has a collection of tools that cover a variety of ways, such as:

• Tools on your PC for hiding IP
• Using Proxy in your Web Browser
• Proxy Sites
• Proxy Lists
• IP checking sites
• VPN services

Covering Web Browsing activities: using Tor www.torproject.org

In fact TOR (The Onion Router) is an ongoing and mature project with a lot of features that enable anonymity on the internet. TOR comes with a Bundled Browser with TOR preconfigured. TOR also has something for smart phones (see below).

For Smartphone, Mobile, Android systems: 

• Orbot - this is based on the Tor technology but available to Android on smartphones.

Email Anonymity
Use the following to protect mask your identity when sending emails:
- Anonymouse - anonymouse.org
- Hide My Ass - www.hidemyass.com

When you go to any these sites, your browser security may flag some of these sites to be suspicious. This could be due to their nature to hide identities or the fact that they are suspicious. In any case, make your own decision before visiting these sites.