It is not correct to think that only bad people would like to be anonymous online, who want to do something wrong while browsing the web. There are many other reasons to be anonymous online. It may be to secure your privacy, to protect your right to free speech, to prevent spam mail, to avoid censoring of your writings by a totalitarian government, creating multiple accounts on social networking sites, to hide your details from your friends, and so on. What topics you’re searching on Google, what opinion do you form on a particular issue, what political party do you favor, etc, may be similar issues that you may not like to disclose to others. Being anonymous online may help you in these matters without doing anything illegal or wrong.
You will be aware that whenever you visit a website, it collects a lot of information about you and your computer. This information may include your IP address, details of your browser, computer, screen resolution, date and time of your visit to the website, details of web pages visited by you, etc. Your IP address can be used to know your location, which generally means name of your city; but in certain situations which may also mean your exact details including name and your street address, of course this would require the help of your ISP. In view of these reasons, many people want to hide their IP addresses while browsing the Internet. This may provide you anonymity to a certain extent, though full anonymity may still not be possible since the processes used to hide the IP address may not be fully secure.
There are many ways to hide your actual IP address while browsing the web using proxy servers. While using a proxy server, your browser will get connected to the proxy server and will send your information to the proxy server, which in turn will send its own information to the actual destination on the Internet that you wanted to visit. Therefore, the information sent to the website you wanted to visit, will be related to the proxy server, and not about your computer. However, please note that the proxy server may have your IP address; the only advantage is that your IP address is now hidden from the website that wanted to visit. You can utilize various types of proxy services.
There are several open or free proxy servers available on the Internet; however some of such proxy servers may have been made available by hacking the server. Moreover, it is possible that some proxy servers may be recording your passwords, email addresses, etc. Therefore, be careful not to use your important passwords, credit card, important email address, etc., while browsing the web through such open proxy servers. It is advisable not to do any online shopping or any other online transactions while using such open proxy servers unless you’re sure about the credibility of such a particular proxy server.
There are some paid/private proxy services also available on the Internet which may allow you access on monthly payment basis. You may need to login to such services with your user name and password. Generally speaking, such paid proxy services may be more secure than the free public proxy services. Of course, even in the case of private proxy servers, it is advisable to check their credentials.
You may also get anonamizing networks on the Internet to provide you with anonymous browsing on the web. One such example is the free Tor project (http://www.torproject.org). An anonamizing network may also use encrypted connection while tunneling through several proxies, resulting into better anonymity since even your proxy server may not know your details. However, by its very nature, such a proxy service will be slow.
Before you use proxy servers, it is better to first get acquainted with the legal provisions applicable in your country. In some countries, it may not be permissible. In certain totalitarian countries, which don’t support free speech, using proxy servers may perhaps even be punishable depending upon the act. So, better be careful and always be on the right side of the law. Moreover, one should not have the false notion that one can do illegal things while browsing the Internet anonymously, since even with anonymous browsing also, generally the IP address of the user is ultimately stored somewhere, if not at the destination website then at least at the proxy server.
This is Part 1 of this article; you may also read Part 2 of this article that explains several precautions that you may take to be anonymous online while browsing the Internet.
Read, How to be anonymous online? Part 1 – Part 2
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