mikemcguff.com: Hide from the computer police

Monday, August 21, 2006

Hide from the computer police

I'm not saying that I surf for anything naughty...but in case you do, here are some tips from the New York Times on staying anonymous (or maybe a little more anonymous) in the online world:

Web sites use two main tools to identify a user: Internet Protocol (I.P.) addresses and browser cookies. The I.P. address is a unique number assigned to your computer when it is connected to the Internet, while cookies are small text strings sent to a Web browser and stored in a file on the computer’s hard drive that can help identify the person visiting a site.
By tracking I.P. addresses and cookies, sites can accumulate data on an individual. And while one or two search requests may not amount to much, as Mr. Cottrell points out, “In aggregate, you can develop a whole lot of leads.”
“Every site you connect to can see your I.P. address,” he said, likening it to Caller ID for telephones. Using a proxy server — a third-party site that shields your real I.P. address from view — is a way to browse privately. BeHidden.com (http://behidden.com) and The Cloak (www.the-cloak.com) are two sites for anonymous surfing.
Some search engines, like Clusty (www.clusty.com) and Ixquick (www.ixquick.com), say they do not store personal search details from their users.