The right to privacy is one of every human being’s basic rights. Absolute anonymity is not exactly possible nowadays, especially in cyberspace. However, there’s a lot that you can do in the attempt to protect your private or official data. Year after year, the number of “casualties” is increasing, as is the imaginativeness of the attacks launched on users, which means that we have to remain up-to-date and wary as well, regardless of whether you’re just protecting data on your private PC or an entire business computer network. In both cases, you have to be aware that the time when a passive defence in form of antivirus programs and optimism is long gone, and that your tactics must be much more elaborate in order to remain truly secure.
Fatal prejudice
Many users may think that hiding one’s IP address is only relevant to those involved in suspicious activities, which is a major mistake. More and more internet users are using the web to pay for products and their own household bills, which makes their PCs very attractive to data thieves. The majority of phishing sites are trying to get the user to visit the website by offering free games, music or films; after that, a few wrongful clicks over your home IP address and the user is quickly treated with a spyware program that may get your credit card number, password or pretty much any other data that he/she’s typed in. In order to avoid this, one of the simplest methods is usage of proxy servers.
Antivirus, firewall or proxy services?
Antivirus, firewall or proxy services, which solution is the best? Make sure you never ask yourself this question, because all three components are desirable and none of them excludes the others. The thing that’s favourable about proxy services is that malicious software won’t even know how to find your PC. The concept is as follows - when you go to a proxy server’s website, and then onto the desired target website, your PC will identify itself to the website being visited with a fake IP address, physically nowhere near the real one. Some proxy services will even let you choose the country in which you’re allegedly located. In order to check the efficiency of your “stealth”, do the following: visit some of the IP address identifying websites directly (such as www.whatismyip.com), and then log into your proxy service and visit the same website through the proxy. If your IP address is different, the objective has been accomplished. You can further check your privacy by clicking the “IP address lookup” feature on the same website in order to obtain precise information on your location, provider etc. If the website displays your real location or a place in its proximity without the proxy, and, for instance, rural parts of Uganda with the proxy, you’re off to a good start.
Hide My Ass!
The website www.hidemyass.com will welcome you to a proper fair of equipment referring to internet privacy. As on every fair, some things are free, while others aren’t. The option that we’re the most interested in is free and very simple - enter the desired address into the free proxy service, and that’s it, except that the webpage opening and rendering speed is somewhat slower. On the other hand, you won’t be drowned in ads and popups, as one would expect from a free service - the target website will be perfectly clear and visible, and there will only be a short description of additional proxy services and their prices for you to see. Two capabilities that you’ll probably be interested in the most are WebProxy, used to easily circumvent any administrator-defined obstacle, and the other is Anonymous E-mail, which enables you to open a temporary e-mail account to be used for several days in order to register on various websites; this helps your real e-mail account remain free of ads and newsletters.
VectroProxy
This site’s web designers ought to look at the navigability and ad placement - not only is there too many of them, but they’re also occupying the best part of the page, while service descriptions have shied away to the lower half. Still, the service works excellently and a bit faster than the previous one. The basic service is free of charge, and there’s only a single way to expand it - buying the entire additional service package. The thing that’s surprised us in a very negative way is that the basic version of the service won’t allow you to access some of the most popular websites, such as YouTube or MySpace, even if audio and video streaming are supported. If you opt for Premium Privacy, which is going to cost you 10 USD per month, you’ll get SSH encryption, limitless access, an ad-free browsing experience, and privacy even from your own internet provider. We believe that the basic version is too stripped for this solution to truly compete with the other ones in the long run.
Vtunnel
Vtunnel won’t ask you for a single penny, offering everything that it has in its basic (and only) version of the service. If encryption is what you’re after, you can simply turn it on by clicking “Enable SSL”. If you’re wondering how the website owners manage to turn this website profitable, you’ll be promptly answered as soon as you’ve visited the website for the first time - it’s packed with ads, popups and all other forms of marketing “violence”. Ads won’t leave you alone even after you’ve started using the website; on the contrary, there will be even more of them. We can’t complain about the speed of opening target websites, but the sheer quantity of ads means that this solution is only good for those with nerves of steel.
Proxify
Proxify is the exact opposite of Vtunnel. It’s managed to remind us of those aggressive door-to-door salesmen, with their fantastic altruistic offers that are not only cost-effective, but can also turn profitable in their own right. You won’t find a single ad on this website, but you’ll see special offers everywhere, stating that you can earn a percentage for each successful referral of a friend or colleague. Although there’s a free version available in theory, you probably won’t be able to run it; we haven’t managed so far, and we’ve been trying for days on end. Therefore, the only way to use this service is to buy the licence outright for at least six months. Having in mind the competing offers, there’s no way to recommend this website.
Shadowsurf
Shadowsurf is yet another “volunteer” among services. No advanced version, no encryption options, no ads, no blocked websites. All that’s required of you is to recommend the website to your friends and perhaps buy the file encryption application (which also exists in a limited-usability free version, offering weaker encryption and much less space). All this would be ideal were the service stable, which it is not; it’s crashed down more often than once every now and then, and in fact - perhaps even more often than not. We believe that this service has yet to be tweaked to full or even acceptable levels of functionality, so we can’t recommend it for the time being.
