I want to hopefully show you one of the reasons why you shouldn’t risk using malware and hacker riddled free anonymous proxies. Many people use these thinking that they will be able to surf anonymously and keep their identities safe and secure.
It’s simply a myth – anonymous proxies hide your identity from one place only and that’s the web server you are visiting, so ok it’s a start but only a start.
Here’s the sort of thing that gets logged at your ISP for a start every-time you use your browser. Here’s a couple of lines logged when I visit a well known website looking for educational articles
Source Destination Protocol Info
192.168.1.2 216.163.137.20 HTTP GET /RealMedia/ads/adstream_mjx.ads/www.playboy.com/index.html/ HTTP/1.1
192.168.1.2 216.163.137.3 HTTP GET /http://pei-ads.playboy.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.playboy.com/index.html HTTP/1.1
I’ve changed the source IP address for obvious reasons but that’s whilst using an anonymous proxy I found on the internet. Not a lot of privacy there !!!
Actually there is virtually none, the only people who may have a hard time tracking me down are Hef and the Playmates.
anonymous web browsingOk let’s have a look at a similar visit using a professional product and a private proxy server.
Source Destination Protocol Info
192.168.1.2 Proxy IP Address SSL Continuation Data
That’s all that is logged, all my browsing is conducted via an SSH connection to the Private proxy I have chosen (which can change automatically across the world if I desire. There is no data logged anywhere in clear text and if you want to read it you’ll need to break the AES cipher which protects the US military secrets as well.
This is what I call anonymous web browsing and I should add that the speed was approximately 20 times as fast as using the free proxy server.
If you are going to protect your privacy online do it properly 🙂 and use a professional solution not piggybacking a hacked Counterstrike server someone left on by mistake 🙂
