Every time you surf the Internet your personal details are being exchanged with the other computer even if you don't tell them anything. Don't think so? Well first you need to understand the basics of the Internet. Every computer when it connects to the Internet is given a unique IP address, this IP address identifies your computer, and it can be used to identify which country you are in, and possibly identify you.
If you want to keep your anonymity when surfing the Internet then you need to find a way to prevent this exchange taking place. There are actually a number of ways of doing this using Internet privacy software. Online privacy is very important these days, there are good reasons for wanting to surf anonymously, but there are also plenty of bad reasons as to why you would want to use privacy software.
You might for example want to conceal your identity when you are leaving information or posting comments, this is particularly important if it may cause someone to hate you. Some people just want to serve using online privacy software because they think it's their right, not everyone wants the government to know what they are doing, even if they're not doing anything wrong. The idea of privacy is often considered as a right, not a privilege.
You might not want people to know the sites you visit, and so you might want to hide your identity from these sites. It really doesn't matter why you want to do it, the good thing is that there are plenty of ways that you can hide your identity using Internet privacy software.
Anonymous surfing normally works by connecting to the Internet through a proxy server, you can think of it like this: When you request a website the request is sent to the proxy server, the proxy server then loads the website and then shows this web page to you. This means that the website thinks that the proxy visited the site, not you. This means that the cookies will not be stored on your computer, they can also prevent loading images and other things to make everything run much quicker.
There are plenty of free privacy services available, however the thing is that these do not normally encrypt your website requests, this means that there is a trail which is left behind. Other people could see this information and trace it back to you, if they wanted. This might not be a good enough form of protection.
Don't forget that there will also be a trail left on your personal computer, unless of course you have done anything to remove this from your computer. There are many different useful privacy eraser programs available which can help you doing just this, one of my personal favorites is ParetoLogic Privacy Controls and can be downloaded by clicking here.
Anonymous surfing cannot and is not 100% guaranteed, it's just not possible to guarantee it. If you are doing anything very bad using one then it would be possible to trace you, it would just take a long time.
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