It's a difficult subject but an entirely understandable one, after all who wants to be spied on, what's actually wrong with wanting anonymous internet surfing? In some peoples minds it often suggests we have something to hide but that is what the people who wish to deny you your privacy want you think. You could just as easily argue that anyone studying chemistry is potentially a terrorist plotting something from the anarchists cookbook.
No I have a problem with being spied on which is why I always remain anoynmous when I'm browsing, I'm not doing anything illegal or wrong but I just want my information kept private. If you do nothing to protect yourself every web site and email you send are at a very minimum logged by your ISP and stored in reponse to a European Directive.
Many people get confused trying to gain this anonymity on the internet, so I wanted to explain one of the common misconceptions that is the anonymous proxy. Now don't get me wrong the anonymous proxy server does offer some slight privacy.
As we can see from the above diagram, this represents your average everday surfer using the internet. He's probably doing what we all do, muddling along the internet, ending up at all sorts of interesting places. As you can see the problem is there is virtually no security nearly all the traffic is in clear text, any hacker can intercept any of this data and pull loads of information, the only time the stream will be protected is when you are using an SSL site which usually only happens on secure payment pages. At least that's someting but believe me if you've ever started a network sniffer at an internet cafe, airport or hotel you'll be truly amazed at some of the information you'll find all in clear text.
Also in the diagram you can see your friendly ISP is usually logging every single move you make on the internet, every web site you visit is stored in those logs. Some of the European Governments have plans to put all that data in a central database so it can be searched by 'relevant authorities'
Added to that the 'destination server' also logs your IP address and records every page you visit. It doesn't feel much like anonymity more like a huge crowd watching your every move and recording all your personal information.
So what Does an Anonymous Proxy do?
If we look at our diagram the anonymous proxy will protect you from one part of that chain of spies. A correctly configured anonymous proxy server will stop your IP address being logged on the target server, doesn't sound much does it ?
It isn't really isn't much - the whole chain is so inheritently open that protecting your idenity from the target server doesn't seem much help, everybody else in that diagram including your ISP have potential access to all your data. Of course it's better than nothing and it at least is a start.
The problems with using anonymous proxies though is people often use free ones that appear on the internet. Now free is good, but the issue here is anonymous proxies are expensive to run so why would anyone knowingly supply one for free ? Mainly they don't know most free anonymous proxies are misconfigured servers which the system admin left open, or hacked servers which hackers install sniffers on to spy on the very people who think they are being secure, a rather nasty irony losing your identity on an anonymous proxy.
Do yourself a favour don't use free anonymous proxies for anonymous internet surfing unless you are very sure of who is running them, the risk is bigger than the benefit. There are services that provide so much more and protect your connection from your PC to the server, protected by a military level cipher not even your ISP can see anything.
