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Protecting Your Anonymity Online

The Quest for Anonymity:

Between Google Analytics, your ISP, and the government; everything you do on the internet is being tracked.Call it market research, call it national security, call it Orwellian big brother, there are many reasons you may have to hide your surfing habits.  I’m going to give you a couple of simple tools to keep your anonymous posts anonymous.

Let me preface this article by warning any people that might feel empowered to use their new found anonymity to wreak havoc across the internet, if someone wants to find out who you are, they will, it is all a question of how much effort (and/or money) they are willing to put into the hunt. The methods described below are simply a deterrent.  There are literally thousands of versions and variations of the tools I am going to recommend. By all means please test these yourself, find out what works best for you.

For starters your internet history is tracked locally (on your PC), if you don’t believe me, websites target you with by searching your cookies when you visit. (This is one example of what they can do.) Don’t worry; these are the easiest tracks to clear up.  You can adjust your browser settings to clean this manually, or some browsers offer a “private browsing session”, personally I’m lazy, and don’t want to go through all the trouble. A simple program like cc cleaner will remove some or all history, cookies etc… from any standard browser.  If you are particularly paranoid you can flush the dns.

flush-dns

Have you ever noticed how when you type in a wrong address your ISP redirects you to their search recommendations?

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Your internet service provider (or ISP), uses multiple methods of tracking your web surfing. The most prevalent and easy to take care of is DNS. DNS is the way the internet directs traffic, when you type in techwarelabs.com your computer asks a DNS server where that is before it directs you. The problem is your ISP knows who you are so they know where you go. You can easily lookup any DNS server to use which will route all of your requests to their server instead of your ISP’s.

Your IP address is your digital signature, it identifies who your ISP is, where you are located, and where you have been. Websites can use tools such as Google Analytics to determine where their clients are geographically located, what hours they visit their website, and how often. The easiest way to mask your IP is to use a proxy. Proxies are usually free and available anywhere you have internet access. They don’t always work though to check a proxy visit a site like IP Chicken or WHATISMYIP before and after to make sure it doesn’t show your IP address.

!!!CAUTION some proxy’s are scams to steal information so be careful about banking and secure websites!!!

More reliable and trustworthy than proxy’s is a free app called HOTSPOT SHIELD this application installs on your computer and creates an anonymous VPN which also secures your traffic from prying eyes at Wi-Fi hotspots (hence the name). This particular application is also quite useful for circumventing pesky work firewalls. For the more technically savvy there is of course the Tor Network, which while it can be slow at times but is a very effective security tool for anonymizing web traffic.

Now that your ISP has no idea where you’re surfing, the web at large can’t find your IP address, and your computer will be clean, it’s time to post your anonymous ranting to the world. Unfortunately the website requires registration. FEAR NOT!! We have a solution, firstly you should try BUG ME NOT they have a growing database of usernames and passwords to bypass irritating registration, plus its user supported so it is literally growing daily. If however they don’t there are several web apps which will come in handy firstly there is mail eliminator this creates a temporary disposable email address to submit in that web form NO MORE SPAM! Let’s say you’re not feeling very creative with the rest of the information head over to fake name generator, and they will take care of the rest.

At this point If you are being tracked online, you are either already on a watch list or your just plain lazy. I hope article was helpful in you anonymous endeavors.

4 Comments... What's your say?

  1. Thank you very much for making this! I’ve been trying to find other blogs basically for searching the information

  2. you can see your ip address form this site also here what is my ip

  3. Would someone be able to explain “…At this point If you are being tracked online, you are either already on a watch list or….”what this watch list is, what can be done if someone is on it? How do you know if you’re on a “watch list”? Does Hotspot Shield cover that? I’ve seen ‘google analytics in my firewall where the “connection ip addresses” are. Should I delete this? Thanks for help.

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