Sunday, June 14, 2009

Stay Out Of The Limelight with an Anonymous Proxy

Your IP address is very important during your Internet travels. It is similar to a dog-tag your computer wears, with all sorts of information engraved. The difference is, people are supposed to read your dog-tags, but you wish to keep your IP address hidden.

Just by knowing your IP address, a hacker could find out quite a bit of information about you; location, server, etc. This is why many people choose to browse anonymously on the web.

In order to accomplish this, they visit an anonymous proxy website. A proxy website simply is a page that has a box to enter the website you wish to visit. When you enter your desired destination, the proxy server replaces your IP address with one of their servers. The proxy acts as a middleman, allows you access to the sites you want, but leaving no trail of it. All your ISP would see is that you visited (so and so proxy site) a bunch of times, and not what you actually visited. This is the simplest type of anonymous proxy.

For enhanced anonymity, we recommend using a software-based proxy that also encrypts your data and changes it IP address regularly. Either type of anonymous proxy will work, some just work better than others.

These anonymous proxies are completely legal and almost a necessity in today’s Internet-based society. With so much traffic on the Internet, criminals are just waiting in line to get some unprepared surfer. Don’t let it be you; be anonymous today.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Mind the Fine Print

One never really pays attention to the “Terms of Service”. Most just check “I agree”, and get on with their business. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just launched a new program that can automatically (by the hour) scan for changes in the Terms of Service agreements in 44 big name websites; Myspace, Facebook, Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc.

The program is located on TOSBack.org, and works in conjunction with the WayBack Machine. The WayBack machine pulls out old drafts of the Terms of Service agreements, and the TOSBack compares them with new versions, even highlighting certain sections that have been changed, deleted, or added.

Tim Jones, the company’s technology manager, attests to the confusion most feel when reading the Terms of Service. “Most skip it because it is boring and confusing.” This is true; it takes a lawyer to understand what the document is saying sometimes, and it is often quite vague.

“Some changes to terms of service are beneficial to customers, and some are not”, states Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. This is especially true in today’s internet travelers, trusting websites with friends, locations, and even personal photos.

Some of these documents hardly ever change, while some do rapidly, as Ebay did five times in two hours. Often, these changes are simply to clarify issues or just to correct a punctuation error, but are sometimes more drastic.

The TOSBack can’t explain the changes made to these Terms of Service documents just yet, but they can alert users who could. The system will continue to evolve and will support explanation capabilities in the future.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

International IP Addresses, Not A Problem

Leaving one’s home is a difficult thing to do: leaving for college, moving, or (for some) just going to work! It is especially hard to leave one’s home AND one’s country. While traveling internationally, some Americans can get homesick. If you are in a different country for an extended period of time, loneliness can easily dominate your trip. If you find yourself forgetting the colors of our flag while abroad, (red white and blue, not white red and blue) watching some good old American television is a great way to restore your morale.

Unfortunately, re-runs of “I Love Lucy” and “Friends” get old quickly, and can lead to a strange affinity for communism. Don’t fear; you are still an American, just an American without a connection to current events back home.

Along came internet television; a godsend to the nomads of the globe. They can catch up on affairs overseas, whether it is watching the stock market, or just to see what antics Miley Cyrus has been up to lately. Soon enough, some media companies wised up, and blocked these homesick people from connecting with their familiarity. All the websites had to do was read your IP address, and once confirmed that you were not in the United States, you were on the blacklist, you got the boot, and quite possibly a “this site has been blocked” message. What is a poor traveler to do?

Simple. Use an anonymous proxy to convert your IP address from the foreign one back to one located in the U.S. While many of these are readily available, many are slow and easily recognized as a proxy, leaving a data trail right back to you. Using a software based proxy, such as Private Proxy, will allow you unrestricted internet travel from anywhere on the globe. You’ll never miss the morning news (or last night’s American Idol) ever again.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Internet Privacy - Protect Yourself

Every day your computer is used to check and track things that are very important in your life. Things like your bank balance, credit card statements and maybe even some trades on the stock market. Did you know that every single thing you do on your computer is logged somewhere on your hard drive? Every web page, password, document and place you visit is recorded and stored. There are a few simple things you can do at home, with what you already have to help protect your Internet privacy and each one only takes a minute or two. Lets go through a couple of them.

First off, when you go to web pages, something called a cookie is placed in a folder in your computer that records information about you. Most of these are completely harmless and beneficial to you the next time you go to the website. However, some can cause problems and should be removed. If you are using Internet Explorer, all you have to do is click on tools and then click on Internet options and where it says browsing history, click delete all. This will clear out all the cookies and web pages you have visited. You can also set up IE to do this automatically. If you are using Firefox, all you have to do is click on tools and then clear private data; you can choose what you want to remove.

Another quick trick is to check your security and privacy settings for your browser of choice. These privacy settings are there to protect you when you visit a website that may try to automatically download something to your computer without your permission. In IE simply go back to tools and then click on the security tab and click the default level if it is available. If it is not available, you are already good to go. Now, click on the privacy tab and do the same thing. If you can’t click on default, you are already set up. Firefox users can click on tools and then options and click on the privacy and security tabs. Once there, check the items you want Firefox to handle for you. Internet privacy is all about limiting the amount of information you want out there and generally, the less there is, the better.

Lastly, another feature of Windows is a built in firewall. A firewall is a layer of protection between your PC and the rest of the Internet. Simply put, it blocks unwanted access to your computer and logs any attempts from any outside PC that tries to access your system. To check your firewall status, go to the control panel and then to the security center. There you will see if you have one active and if not, it can direct you to a firewall you can use.

Remember, your Internet privacy is your responsibility. Taking simple and easily available steps can keep you and your information safe and where it belongs, with you. There are much more effective ways to protect your privacy, such as purchasing anonymous proxy software, but this is a great place to start and will help you to take small steps toward securing your Internet privacy.