Introduction

There are many reasons you have for wanting to browse the web anonymously, such as simple paranoiaed in terms of protecting personal data, to hiding browsing activities from other users of a computer including parents, spouses, or even other organizations. Whatever your reasons for wanting to use anonymous browsing services, or criticizing others for wanting to use them, I will not debate the political, legal, moral, ethical and other reasons, but simply review the available technology.

Be aware that most corporate networks will block the use of anonymous surfing activities at the corporate firewall. Corporate networks and internet links are after all the property of your employer and should never be misused in violation of corporate acceptable use policies, so don¡¯t expect any help here in finding ways to circumvent firewall blocking.

The most obvious anonymous browsing application for most people is in internet cafes, on public terminals, using wireless or even wired access points away from home, or in fact, on any PC including your own, where you don't want to leave traces of your private surfing activities. Some other browsing activity cleaners exist that clear the cache, cookies, history and other traces, some are even available as a standard in most browsers, but anonymous browsing goes a step further. What attracts me is not so much the privacy aspect, but rather the security potential, because all of the anonymizing browser proxy based services create a secure encrypted connection between the PC you are using and the first anonymizing proxy server. This allows you to safely transmit information with little risk of local interception, making it ideal for surfing on open Wi-Fi networks, or in hotels while travelling.

Previously, secure surfing on such networks required the use of private VPN networks, generally an option only available to corporate employees, those with the available money to pay for it and the technically savvy. Now, using any of the Tor or JAP based browsers, any surfer can reap the same sort of security benefits for their browsing. Whatever the reasons anyone may have for using anonymizing browsing, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing well, and a number of both free and subscription based browsing applications and services have become available.