So, let’s talk privacy, and then let’s talk about how you haven’t got any. That’s right, if you are surfing the Internet, and you aren’t doing it through some third party proxy server, the sites you surf to can potentially learn everything about you-your habits, your likes and dislikes, who your buying preferences and more.
In this way, advertisers can serve up those annoying pop-up ads, spyware can quietly download to your computer in the background and track your every move, government agencies can watch you, and hackers can slither into your hard drive and steal your world.
Paranoid yet?
If you aren’t re-read the the opening to this article slowly. While you are reading it, remember an advertiser’s spyware could be phoning in your private information for future use as you read.
What is anonymous surfing? Remember the old punchline, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog?” Well, if you practice Anonymous Web Surfing 101 nobody will know whether your Fido, the family pet out looking for the latest craze in dog food or the parakeet looking for warmer climes.
But seriously folks, put simply, anonymous web surfing erases any trace or trail of where you’ve been or going on the Internet.
Your private world remains private and no one, not even your Internet Service Provider (that’s the guy you pay $20 to $40 dollars a month to get on the Net) won’t have a clue about who you are. This is how it used to be, and this is how it should be. Period. End of story.
Beyond simple paranoia, people have various reasons to surf anonymously ranging from general terror about losing their privacy to wanting to keep their personal surfing sites that they go to on the job away from the prying eyes of their employers. Read more...
