Using anonymous proxy server services to hide
your TCP/IP address
If privacy is of any concern to
you (and it should be if you are on the internet), then you
should consider masking your TCP/IP address. This is
important if you are using a dialup connection, and it is
absolutely essential if you are connected via DSL or cable
modem.
Your TCP/IP address identifies
your machine to the internet. Web sites commonly store
this address in their log files. Most of the time the
log files are deleted after a brief time as they tend to get
very large. Some sites mine these log files and save the
data for use later. Still others may directly store the
TCP/IP addresses in various reports and databases.
Why is this a problem?
First, you can be identified by your TCP/IP address. If
you are surfing to sites you would rather not have announced
to the world, you had better hide your TCP/IP address.
Second, if someone has your
TCP/IP address they can find your machine and attack it in
various ways. If you don't have a good firewall set up, your
system could be damaged or data could be stolen.
In addition, some web sites
have installed various security measures to prevent hacking.
One story I read recently involved a teenager who purchased a
product to allow him to download an entire web site for
offline viewing. There is nothing wrong with this ... in fact,
it can be very useful to keep an offline copy of a web site
for quick viewing.
The teenager set up his program
to copy down an entire website over night and went to sleep.
When he woke up he had the entire site on his hard drive and
was happily looking at what he had received when he was
visited by some unpleasant lawyers. These creeps wanted to
know why he had deleted their client's entire database! It
turned out that the administrative functions of the website
were wide open, and one of the buttons was a "delete" record
function. By downloading the entire site, the teenager's
program had inadvertently "pressed" the button for each
record.
Now, if the teenager had been
surfing anonymously, he would never had had this problem. Oh
yeah, he would have deleted the database, but this is most
definitely the fault of the web designer for not securing
their administrative functions. But the company could not have
traced the issue back to the teenager, thus avoiding a useless
lawsuit and much embarrassment for the young man.
There are a number of services available:
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