What is anonymous surfing?

Anonymous surfing, or browsing, is simply browsing the internet with most of your identity hidden. This can be accomplished by using an anonymous browser based proxy or web proxy. These are websites you can use to input the web page you wish to visit, and the service will take you to that webpage with information such as the location of your computer and your IP address hidden from the web page.

 
In details: when a user tries to access a web page, the proxy will talk to that web page as an ambassador of the user, maintaining the privacy of the user. The practice of anonymous browsing can also preserve the privacy of the user from potential loggers spying on the user’s connection.
 

Effectiveness of Anonymous Browsing

 
Because anonymous browsing lets the user bypass restrictions in the Internet connection such as a simple firewall, it is a widely used technique. It is especially used often in schools and offices where there are heavy restrictions on web pages that are accessible. Students will anonymously browse to gain access to social networking websites blocked by the school’s tech office like MySpace, FaceBook, Hi5, Bebo, YouTube, and like. Office workers will also anonymously browse because this can help them bypass the restrictions set by the employers, or to not leave any tracks of browsed websites in case that the employers are monitoring their Internet usage.
In addition to hiding your IP address, an anonymous proxy server will typically remove traffic such as:
  • Cookies
  • Scripts
  • Pop-ups
  • Banners
  • Referrer information
These options should be configurable by the end-user to enable to proxy server to work with web sites which require cookies or pop-ups.
 

Web Proxy Services for Anonymous Surfing

 
Anonymous web proxy services tend to be somewhat unstable, the list of current anonymous web proxy services changes constantly. In addition, some anonymous web proxy services are free services and others are not.
 
Anonymous browsing is a very easy way to browse without needing to worry too much about information such as the IP address being released publicly. Nonetheless, it is critical to double check whether a certain anonymous browsing service is honorable or not to prevent any, potentially even worse, disasters from occurring.
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Posted under proxy101

Published on 18/09/2008

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