Anonymous Proxies for Surfing
If you value your privacy and want to keep your identity secure online then some form of proxy surfing is essential. This is what your internet surfing looks without a proxy – pretty wide open to the bad guys, your every move logged at the ISP and the majority of data all in clear text.
Yep clear text – the transport protocol used on the internet mostly is HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol) which is fast, efficient and has helped the Internet become the global information store it is today. Unfortunately it has absolutely no concept of security built in and the data it carries flies around in ascii text including any usernames, account details that it transports.
If you want a very vivid example next time your connected to a hotel internet connection – try running a network sniffer like wireshark and see what sort of data you see flying passed your computer – it can be truly eye opening but even proxy surfing won’t help you there !
So proxy surfing – how and why?
Well the how is pretty easy – all you need to do is get the IP address of a proxy server (preferably an anonymous proxy server) input into to your browser
To set up Firefox for a Proxy manually – Tools/Options/Advanced/Network/Connections
To Set up IE for a Proxy Manually – Tools/Internet Options/Connections/Lan Settings
As soon as you input the proxy surfing IP address – all your web requests will go through that proxy server. Of course you MUST TRUST the PROXY owner as you are sending all your traffic through that server.
SO why do People use Proxy Surfing ?
The simple fact is that most privacy seekers use a proxy server because when you visit a web site instead of logging your IP address in it’s logs only the proxy gets logged leaving your identity anonymous from that server. Of course it’s all still in your ISP logs and various other places but Proxy Surfing does offer some level of anonymity.
If you want to try a professional Identity Protector try the free demo of – Identity Cloaker , this program is without doubt the most secure anonymous browsing program on the internet.