Websites can gather an astonishing amount of information about you. They can track your online travels, tell what operating system and browser you’re running, find out your machine name, peer into your clipboard, uncover the site you’ve visited, examine your History list, and delve into your cache. They can also examine your IP address to learn basic information about you, such as your geographic location. To get a sense of kind of information websites can find out about you, head to ProxyWay Privacy Test. It will display your IP address, your current geographic location, the contents of your Windows Clipboard, and more. Its pretty sobering stuff.
The best way to make sure that websites can’t gather personal information about you and your computer is to surf anonymously, that is, use an anonymous Proxy server that sits between you and the websites you visit. When you use an anonymous proxy server, your browser doesn’t contact a website directly. Instead, it tells a proxy server which website you want to visit. The websites sees the IP address of the proxy server, not your PC’s Ip address. It can’t read your cookies, see your History list, or examine your clipboard and cache because your PC is never in direct contact with it. You can surf anonymously, without a trace.
To use an anonymous proxy server in concert with your browser, follow these steps:
1. Find an anonymous proxy server. Hundreds of free, public proxy servers are available at Atomintersoft.com. The website lists information about each server, including its uptime percentage and the last time the server was checked to see if it was online.
2. Find the server with the highest percentage of uptime. Write down the server’s IP address and the port of its users. For example, in the listing 24.237.148.16:80, and the IP address is 24.237.148.16 and the port number is 80
3. In Internet Explorer, select Tools > Internet Options, click the connections tab, and click the LAN settings button.
4. Check the “Use a proxy server for you LAN box. In the address field, type in the IP address of the proxy server. In the port field, type in its port number. Check the “Bypass proxy server for local addresses” box; you don’t need to remain anonymous on your local network.
5. Click Ok and then OK again to close the dialog boxes.
Now when you surf the web, the proxy server will protect your privacy. Keep in mind that proxy servers can make surfing the web much slower.
You may also want to use a web-based, anonymous surfing service. For example Anonymizer, Inc offers free and fee-based services. Each service installs a toolbar on anonymous browsing. The fee based service offers benefits beyond those of the free service. For example, it shields your IP address and lets you set custom anonymity levels for different websites. It also lets you completely block sertain websites.
Another solution is to download software that will automatically configure your browser to use anonymous proxy servers. It will also automatically find the fastest one, without any setup on your part.