Everybody values their privacy and as soon as you step into the online world your privacy is something that is easily exposed, there are people and companies out there who are just dying to get hold of your personal information and even financial details without you knowing, whilst a lot of people might roll their eyes at ‘identity theft’, there is a very real risk of it happening if you don’t take the necessary precautions.

When you go to any website your browser will by design send over various details about your computer setup, this will include your browser, your operating system, your screen resolution and IP address. For the most part this is all information that cannot really identify you and no personal details are collected. There is a deal of controversy as to how much information your IP address can give away. With an IP address you would be able to determine who the internet service provider is and also the rough geographic area.

For most people this isn’t really an issue, however, tracking cookies and your IP address are often used by companies to track trends on internet surfing and it is quite possible that your own internet service provider could be doing just this. By monitoring surfing trends companies are able to get an idea as to what kind of information is viewed at different times of the day and also the behaviour that people exhibit in their web browsing. The ultimate goal behind this is usually to monitor advertising campaigns and to determine when people are more likely to click on ads and view certain sites. A lot of people think this is ethically wrong and although no personal information is being collected, you are having your browsing habits monitored and scrutinized! So how do you stop it?

Proxy Servers – You might have read my article on proxy servers but in case you haven’t I’ll quickly explain what they are. A proxy server is essentially a server that will forward web requests from your machine to the destination web server. It kind of acts as a middle man in web browsing and by doing this the destination web server will not identity you as the visitor, instead it will identify the proxy server. By doing this your IP address is not being exposed and you are retaining a certain amount of your online privacy. Proxy servers can have down sides though:

• They will slow down your browsing experience, sometimes to the point where pages simply won’t load.
• Some proxy servers might not be legitimate and might collect logs themselves or worse, personal information.
• If you want fast, anonymous and reliable proxy servers then you should be prepared to pay for them.

For the most part, your normal web browsing will not give away any crucial information about yourself, the real danger lies with spyware and malware.

Spyware, malware and your privacy – This is where the real risk lies with your privacy. Spyware and malware are pieces of software on your computer than you usually won’t know about. If you happen to become infected it can be bad news for your data and personal information. It is not uncommon for malware to ‘key log’ what you type and then send the data back to a malicious server. By doing this, the people behind the malware are able to gather personal information that you type in online; this can include your name, address, telephone number and more worryingly; your bank details and online usernames and passwords.

Spyware and malware are the biggest threat to your privacy online and sadly the number of infections is steadily rising. Infection can come from many different sources – spam emails, web exploits, or even files that you download. Because of this it is very important that you have an up to date malware and spyware solution on your computer. Malwarebytes is great at removing malware but does not offer real time protection unless you use the paid version.Stopzilla is also a very effective piece of software against all types of malware and spyware and does come with a real time protection engine to make sure your constantly being protected.

When it comes to surfing the net a lot of people take their anonymity very seriously and why wouldn’t they? A lot of people like their privacy and don’t like the fact that certain sites collect and store information on the user. So what can you do to prevent this and protect your privacy? Well surfing anonymously usually comes at a cost; this could be an actual cost for paying for private proxy servers or vpn’s, or a cost of speed when you notice your browsing is a lot slower when using a proxy server. First things first though, let’s take a look at proxy servers.

Proxy Server – A proxy server is basically a server that relays traffic between you and the end host and therefore masks the original sender’s identity. Let’s take an example; you want to visit google.com but don’t want to expose your ip address, so you set your proxy settings up and go to google.com. As soon as you press enter your request is forwarded to the proxy server, the proxy server then sends the request to Google, receives the content and sends it back to you.

Types of Proxy Servers – There are several different types of proxy servers depending what you need them for. The most common are:

1. HTTP Proxies – These are used in the scenario above and are used solely for web page request.
2. SOCKS Proxies – These are used for different types of traffic, not necessarily web traffic, for example they could be used for FTP, Messenger or IRC traffic.
3. Web Filter Proxies – These are used to filter web traffic for unwanted content and are usually used in corporate environments to limit users to the sites they can view.

Will a proxy server make me anonymous? – Well there are a few things to consider here. Firstly it depends on whether the proxy server you’re using is meant to be an anonymous one or not. When a proxy server requests a web page for you it may sometimes forward on a particular HTTP header that will reveal your ip address, if this is the case then no, your proxy server isn’t anonymous, because the end host can see your ip address still. If however the proxy server does not forward this header then the end host will think the request came from the proxy server and not you, therefore making you anonymous. Great! Well kind of, the other thing to consider here is whether the proxy server keeps logs or not, 99% of public ones will, and because of this you’re not totally anonymous because there is still a record of what you’ve done.

What about if I want to view blocked sites? – This is probably the most common use of proxies nowadays, people at schools, colleges etc want to view their favorite sites (facebook for example!) but cant because their web filter prevents them. In this case the most useful proxy is a web proxy. A web proxy is basically a website you visit that you then use as your browser (confused yet?) It acts in the same way as an http proxy except it doesn’t require any configuring on the clients side. For this reason these have become very popular, the problem is most of these are actually blocked by the web filters themselves, rendering them useless.

So how do you be totally anonymous online? – The things to look out for here are whether your ip address is revealed and whether the proxy server keeps logs. Well a lot of proxy servers won’t forward your ip address, but finding a public one that doesn’t keep logs is unlikely. For the casual browser though this shouldn’t be a big concern, for those after true anonymity though, they should consider a paid option, whether it be private proxy servers or a private VPN.