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Sometimes you want people to know who you are, while other times you do not. By default on the Internet, with each and every connection you make you broadcast your location with your public IP address—unless you take steps to protect your identity. That IP address can be used to track you and your activities; it can also be used to locate where you are geographically. The Internet is not anonymous. There are, however, a number of different solutions with which you can hide your real IP address and, in effect, have an “anonymous” Web experience. Fundamentally, the mechanism by which the anonymous Web experience is achieved is by way of some form of proxy. That is either a proxy client that is installed locally on your own network or PC or one that is available as a browser-based service online. Traffic from your PC is redirected through the proxy making it look to the outside world as if the proxy (which has a different IP address) is where the traffic originated from. In this review, we look at some of the different options, including Anonymyizer, NetConceal and Vidalia (Tor), as well as a number of online services such as Anonymouse and Megaproxy. We’ll evaluate what works well and what does not to help make you anonymous online.

2. Anonymizer

Anonymizer

The Anonymizer software product is one of the best-known Web solutions in this space. Over the years, it has morphed from a simple online-only service that lets users type in an address they wanted to visit anonymously to a full desktop suite. The full Anonymizer suite includes anonymous Web surfing, spyware scanning, anonymous email addresses and spam protection. For the purposes of this review, we’re primarily concerned with just the anonymous Web surfing application called Anonymous Surfing. Installing Anonymizer’s anonymous Web surfing application is relatively easy and painless. Anonymizer has a free seven-day trial, which installed without incident for our evaluation and was up and running within minutes without the need to reboot the PC. The trial also includes Anonymizer Spyware scanner, digital shredder cookie/cache cleaner and the Nyms anonymous email service. You don’t need to actually run all of them, and in our test, we actually just installed the Web surfing component which provides a great deal of functionality on its own. Anonymizer: Anonymous Surfing main dashboard Anonymizer : Anonymous Surfing main dashboard A main feature of the anonymous surfing application is the ability to mask your IP address. Anonymizer really makes this easy to control with a simple On/Off button setup. They also clearly show you what your actual IP address is and then show what your “anonymized” IP address is without having to activate the service. You don’t get a choice of what the new IP address will be with Anonymizer; it’s changed automatically by Anonymizer every 24 hours. You also cannot choose geography either, so your new IP will always be located in the United States. Beyond just providing you with a different IP address, Anonymizer also offers a check box where you can filter the sites you browse for malicious content. There is also an option to have the connection SSL encrypted, which provides another degree of security as it encrypts your traffic between your location and the proxy server. By virtue of having the traffic SSL encrypted, Anonymizer also claims that it offers Wi-Fi security since all your traffic is encrypted and not open for prying eyes to look at. As an added bonus, all the sites that you visit while surfing when Anonymizer is activated are also validated against phishing (fake address sites) and pharming (where the DNS is pointing you to the wrong site) as well. The phishing, pharming, SSL protection and malicious Website protection service are all part of the core Anonymous Web Surfing application, so no need to buy anything else to get those features. While it’s great that Anonymizer clearly communicates the address of what it calls your “anonymous” IP address, it’s always a good idea to check and see if that’s how others actually see it. Among the most basic ways of testing Anonymizer’s IP address claims is by visiting a site like WhatIsMyIp.com or Ipexposed.com where your public IP address is displayed. With Anonymizer there was no incident; the IP address the program claimed it was providing was the one that others saw too. Not all proxies are anonymous though, and there are a number of ways by which a site can detect whether or not you are using a proxy (and then potentially block you). As such, it’s also a good idea to use a form of a ProxyJudge script that tests the information sent from your local PC in the HTTP header information in order to validate whether or not you actually are anonymous (or just seen to be using a proxy). For this review we opted for a free online ProxyJudge script at: http://www.proxyserverprivacy.com/adv-free-proxy-detector.shtml to validate the various services. In the case of Anonymizer, the result was that no proxy was detected at all - which is result you want to see. It means that from the outside world’s point of view you are who you say you are and there is no obvious reason to suspect otherwise. Now to be fair, there are other mechanisms by which your real IP could perhaps be discovered including a rogue JavaScript or flash file. Anonymizer does not offer the option of blocking those types of files in the dashboard, but as a user, it’s something that you might want to consider doing on your own in your own local browser. The other issue to consider is speed. In limited testing we found that using Anonymizer resulted in a bandwidth speed decrease ranging from 25% to 50% (using third-party speed test tools at Broadbandreports.com and Whatismyip.com). In general, most of the anonymous-IP services we tested had some performance hit over running a naked (“non-anonymized”) connection.

3. NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield

NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield

NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield is an interesting offering providing users with the ability to choose their proxy from an automatically generated list. In addition to using the proxy for Web traffic, NetConceal also offers the promise of being able to use the proxy for other IP services as well, such as instant messaging or email. NetConceal setup Setup for NetConceal You can also specify which geography you want the proxy to be from as well as specifying SSL-only proxies. NetConceal options NetConceal options for selecting type and location of the proxy. Once the proxy has been selected, NetConceal bounces you over to a new screen that is supposed to validate what in fact you’re running with a different IP address. NetConceal fake address The NetConceal fake address page Unfortunately not all of the proxies in the NetConceal list were as reliable as we would have liked. We experienced intermittent connection difficulties with various proxies where sometimes the proxy worked and passed traffic reliably and sometimes it didn’t. The NetConceal start window in the browser warns that you need to stay in the same window to be anonymous. But once you start surfing, there is no indication either in the task bar, navigation bar or otherwise that you’re surfing with a different proxy. Additionally, not all sites were accessible, including the third-party sites we attempted to visit to verify the proxy and the IP address. Once launched, there is no simple dashboard to just switch proxies or to switch a proxy off (other than closing the window that first started browsing with). The ability to practically anonymously surf the Web is a great idea, but as was the case with the browser, proxy connections for non-browser internet activities were not always 100% reliable.

4. Vidalia (Tor/Privoxy)

Vidalia

While there are many different public open proxies on the Internet today, the Tor onion router network is specifically about providing users with a degree of privacy and anonymity. The Tor project claims that hundreds of thousand of people use the Tor network to provide privacy. Though Tor is popular, by itself it’s not quite as easy to take advantage of as it could be and that’s where Vidalia comes in. Vidalia is a packaged application that includes Tor, the Privoxy local proxy as well as the Vidalia GUI for managing the Tor experience. With the one Vidalia download, you end up with a local Privoxy proxy loaded on your local PC with an instance of Tor to connect through for privacy. Vidalia control panel The Vidalia control panel The Vidalia control panel shows you the status of your Tor connection, lets you start and stop it and provides an easy way to change proxies with the Use a New Identity button. Vidalia also offers a bandwidth graph so you can see exactly how much traffic you’ve sent through Tor. If you’re curious to see how big the Tor network is and how traffic flows, there is also an option to view the network Vidalia Tor Network Map Vidalia: Tor Network Map showing connection activity To get Vidalia to work with your Internet applications, there are a few different approaches. Since the Privoxy part of Vidalia is a local proxy, you can simply set any browser you may use to connect through the local proxy at the address and port what you specify in the Vidalia settings. For Mozilla Firefox users, taking advantage of Tor with Vidalia is even easier with a simple add-on called TorButton. With TorButton, there is a small indicator at the bottom of the browser display that you click on or off in order to activate an anonymous browsing experience. While Vidalia makes Tor easy to use, there are still a few things the Vidalia control panel does not easily enable. For example, there is no easy way to specify or enable an SSL proxy. Also, there is no easy way to ensure that the proxy you select is in fact an anonymous proxy. Using the free online ProxyJudge script at: http://www.proxyserverprivacy.com/adv-free-proxy-detector.shtml, we had proxies that were identified as anonymous as well as those that could be identified as being proxies—it all depended on which Tor server we were connected to. The same issue goes for speed with Vidalia. While some Tor servers didn’t seem to impact our bandwidth by more than 25%, some servers were somewhat slower (several resulted in an 80% bandwidth or greater speed reduction). Vidalia is, however, free and it is open source. You can also (if you’re so inclined) look at the source code and modify and/or extend it you need to.

5. MegaProxy

MegaProxy

So far the services we’ve looked at have all required a local client download. However, there are also online anonymous proxy services, such as the package MegaProxy offers. MegaProxy has two offerings: One is a free service that provides a basic degree of anonymity and security and the second is a paid service with additional security features (and a cost of $9.99 for three months). For the purposes of this review we evaluated the free option, since MegaProxy (unlike Anonymizer) does not offer a free trial of its SSL enabled service. That said, the free MegaProxy is no slouch either and works reasonably well. MegaProxy configuration preferences MegaProxy : Configuration preferences with the locked areas as the premium paid features. What MegaProxy provides is a new toolbar that shows up in your main browser window through which you can surf anonymously. In addition to providing a new IP address, MegaProxy also offers users the option of hiding what browser and operating system you may use (which can be tracked, too). It also hides the HTTP referred information that can be used to identify which site you last visited. With the free service, Megaproxy will also encrypt and transform up to 20 web cookies into session-only cookies, which also provides an addition degree of privacy. The free MegaProxy service also performed well in our ProxyJudge test, which was not able to identify that a proxy was in fact being used. While the free MegaProxy service does give you the ability to surf anonymously, there are some restrictions. Among them is that flash files will not filter through the free proxy. Forms and remote logins are restricted. MegaProxy has also put a limit of only being able to view 60 Webpages in a five-hour timeframe. MegaProxy With MegaProxy’s free service, flash files are restricted. For the $9.99 for three months ($40 a year), MegaProxy’s paid service does not have the same usage restrictions. On the privacy side, it provides SSL encryption as well as a neat anti-caching feature, which prevents the browser from storing temporary files.

6. Anonymouse.org

Anonymouse.org

Anonymouse.org is also an online browser-based anonymous-IP service. As is the case with Megaproxy, there is a free service and then there is a paid service. The free anonymouse.org service is ad supported and does not provide SSL encryption. The paid service runs $38 dollars a year and offers SSL as well as some additional cookie handling feature to further ensure privacy. Anonymouse.org Surfing anonymously with anonymouse.org The free version of Anonymouse also had difficulties handling flash files and it does not offer any options for changing the proxy you’re connected to. Additionally, the proxy used by anonymouse.org in the online ProxyJudge test was easily revealed.

7. Product Comparison Matrix

Product	Anonymizer	NetConceal	Vidalia	MegaProxy	Anonymouse

8. Conclusions

Conclusions

Hiding your IP or making it appear to be something other than what it actually is really isn’t a terribly difficult chore. In addition to the tools and services we’ve reviewed in this article, a simple search for “open proxy” in your favorite search engine will yield many more options, as well as lists of open proxies you can use. When surfing the Web with the major browsers, it’s a trivial matter to set the browser to use a proxy instead of connecting directly to the Internet. The problem comes from finding reliable proxies that will work consistently. In the case of Anonymizer, the anonymous-IP service is easy to setup and use, providing a clear picture of what is going on. The built in phishing/pharming/malicious file filter is also a major added bonus. Being limited to just one IP address per day that is limited to the United States, could, however, be a sticking point for some. Anonymizer also does not have an online interface at this point, so it’s limited to just your local PC installation. The Anonymizer Anonymous surfing product is only $29.99 a year, though, which among the paid services is a good deal. NetConceal provides more choices when it comes to proxy selection, but it pales in comparison to Anonymizer’s easy to use management interface. As a paid product, though, NetConceal is only $24.95 and there are no yearly subscription fees. Vidalia’s packaging of the Tor network is a superior choice compared to NetConceal, and with Vidalia’s cost being zero, it’s also an even better deal. The ability to connect into a global network of proxies with Tor is a very good thing, and while not all of the Tor proxies are of the same quality, most work well. On the online proxy side, Anonymouse.org and Megaproxy are similar, while the fact that Megaproxy’s proxy was not reported as a proxy is a huge bonus and one that likely gives it an edge. Then again on the free side of the equation with anonymouse.org, you’re not limited to just 60 sites in five hours - which is a strong negative for the free Megaproxy service. Both Megaproxy and anonymouse.org have paid services that improve speed and performance while providing additional privacy and security measures. Anonymouse.org is $38 a year while the paid Megaproxy service is almost the same at about $40 a year (listed pricing is $9.99 for 90 days). If you need an online service that you want for free, Anonymouse is the way to go. If you’re willing to pay, Megaproxy might have an edge thanks to its improved anti-caching features. If you don’t mind just having a U.S. IP address, then Anonymizer is a solid service. If you’re looking for something more, then Vidalia is a great place to start. It’s important to note that none of these services can entirely protect your IP and your identity but they all will move you in the right privacy direction. Happy (anonymous) surfing!

How do I hide the email addresses I’m sending to on a message? Have you ever gotten a piece of email where you weren’t listed as a recipient? Your email address wasn’t present on either the “To:” line or the “Cc:” (Carbon Copy) line, but somehow you got it anyway. What you didn’t see was what’s called the “Blind Carbon Copy” line, or “Bcc:” which allows the sender to specify a list of people to get the message without their name appearing on it. Why “carbon” and what’s this about it being “blind”? • The term “Carbon Copy” dates from the pre-photocopy typewriter days where the way to make a second copy was to insert a sheet of carbon paper between two sheets of typewriter paper - when the typewriter struck an image of a letter on the top it would also press an image through the carbon paper onto the second page. In today’s digital age, the term simply means any copy of a document or email sent to someone in addition to the primary recipient. It’s common courtesy on business correspondence to let the recipient know who else is getting the document by listing them after a “Cc:” somewhere on the document. Email of course does this automatically with the “Cc:” field into which you enter email addresses. “Blind” simply means that someone else gets a copy but they’re not listed on the “Cc:” line as getting one. Here’s the rub: how you access the blind carbon copy function will depend on your email client. Look in the on-line help for “bcc” or “Blind Carbon Copy”. In Outlook there is a BCC field that’s simply not visible by default. When you compose a message hit the View menu and you’ll find an item labeled Bcc field which will turn it on. In Outlook Express hit the View menu while composing a message and you’ll see an item All Headers that does the same. BCC can be a courtesy if used correctly. If you’re sending email to a large number of people you can reduce the size of the message and the “To:” or “Cc:” headers that people might have to wade through by BCCing your message to them. On the other hand, it can also be somewhat rude to BCC what someone might think is a personal message to others as well. BCC. Use it responsibly. When using bcc to send out emails from Outlook Express 6.0, the recipient should see “Undisclosed-Recipient;” in the TO field. However the recipients in my bcc list that I sent out see my own (the sender) email instead. Eventually it is showing as \”FROM: myemail@domain.com, TO: myemail@domain.com”. How do I get it to display “Undisclosed-Recipients:;” in the TO field? Unfortunately I’m seeing different results. When I use Outlook (not Outlook Express), I see the behavior that you describe. On the other hand, if I use Outlook Express I see the behavior you’re looking for: “Undisclosed Recipients”. As a result, I’m not sure exactly what to tell you. I hate to say “It works on my machine.”, but it does. Anything else about your setup that might be unique? I want find the list of “undisclosed recipients” of the email I’ve received in outlook. Is there any way? “Undisclosed recipients” is often placed in the “To:” line by some mailers when the email being sent has no entries in the “To:” or “Cc:” lines. The sender has used the “Bcc:” feature of email to send the email to one or more people, without revealing who they are. So how do you find out who they are? • You don’t. That’s what “undisclosed” means. The information about who the email was sent to is not included in the email. There is simply no way of determining if it was sent to anyone else and if so, who. Now, to be complete, I do recall hearing about some old email programs - and we’re talking ten or twenty years ago - that got the whole concept of “Bcc:” and undisclosed recipients wrong. They included the Bcc’d recipients in headers that everyone could read if they knew how. But that was a serious bug and has long since been resolved. Today’s email programs simply don’t disclose “undisclosed recipients”. It would be wrong to do so. collected from Internet