Whether you’re shopping online, chatting with friends on public wifi, downloading torrents, streaming video from foreign sites, or browsing the internet outside your home network, most users can benefit from private web surfing.
Private web surfing, also known as anonymous surfing/browsing can be done in two different ways.
Proxies are probably the most common of the two. They’re more widely available, and cheaper (or free). Proxies can be divided into a number of categories, some of which don’t need to be discussed because their uses won’t apply to private web surfing. For now, it’s only necessary to know about “open proxies” and “web based proxies”. Though the end user’s experience is different, these proxies work in the same way. A proxy server sits between you and the internet, retrieving information for you, instead of you accessing the information directly.
Open proxies are usually found on a “list”, or “proxy list”. It will be a list of servers and port numbers that you can use to alter the manual proxy settings of your browser. If you’ve never done this before, it’s actually pretty easy. About.com and HowTo.com have tutorials for common internet browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer) that can show you how to do this in two minutes, providing you have the IP address and port number of a proxy.
Actually finding reliable open proxies is another story. You’ll have to sift through a lot of garbage, spam, malware, and other useless crap before you can find anything worth while. One consistently reliable proxy list can be found at Hide My Ass, a professional service. They don’t own the proxies, they just provide an updated list.
I can’t recommend using open proxies because they are such a security risk. The server owner will have access to your IP address and be able to view all your traffic if he wants to. It’s for this reason that open proxies can risk your privacy online as much as they can secure.
Web based proxies are web pages that can be accessed from your internet browser. If you have the URL of a reliable web based proxy, you can go to the site, and type the URL of another websites you want to view privately or unblock into the browser bar provided on the page. Web based proxies form unknown sources are as much of a risk as open proxies, because you don’t know who is managing the proxy server. Hide My Ass has a web based proxy that you can trust. This is the second time I’ve mentioned them, so I’ll also let you know that they have other private web surfing/linking/uploading/email services available for free.
If you’re looking for a faster, more reliable proxy service, SecuriTales can provide that. For $6 per month (+25% discount) you can get access to premium proxy servers in The US and The UK, support, and a private link from your email inbox (or their site). This is a better solution for long term users because your web surfing will be faster, and there are no advertisements.
After all that, I haven’t even started taking about virtual private networks.
VPN, though they product similar results to proxies, are a very different online tool. They combine SSL encryption (the stuff used on online shopping sites) and VPN tunneling to
The combination of invisibility and encryption keeps you anonymous while you browse the web. In addition to this, one huge advantage is that VPNs work with all programs on your phone and computer. Proxies only make your browsing anonymous. Gaming, chatting, VOIP calls, and everything outside of straight browsing must be done through a VPN.
VPNs can also be more convenient, because you can use your normal browser as opposed to the secure browser provided by your proxy service. Simply connect, and leave the connection running in the background while you go about your normal activity.
Users in countries that censor the internet, P2P/Torrent fans, and those looking for foreign IP address to stream movies/TV from another country should be using virtual private networks.
Again, Hide My Ass is the place to go. They offer a ProVPN service that has at least 5 times more VPN servers than other services, as well as more IP addresses, in a larger variety of countries. While some services may offer one country location in 5 cities, Hide My Ass offers 37 different country locations and almost 23,000 IP addresses for the same price.
There still are other VPN services to check out thought. For example, 12VPN supports more devices than any other service, as well as port forwarding, military grade encryption (256 bit, 1024 bit, 2048 bit, 4096 bit), and other customizable options. They are also available in China and The Middle East, where most other services are blocked.
>>> Alternate site for users in China
StrongVPN is a very well known VPN service that by default, provides dedicated IP addresses for all OpenVPN servers, and has PPTP VPN plans for $55 dollars per year – an unbelievably cheap price for a reliable VPN service. They also have live support and 2048 bit encryption available.
So you can see that there are plenty of options, with a variety of features, unique to each service, and designed for a wide range of users. Check out some sites, and see what might fit your needs. All services come with money back guarantees, so there’s nothing to lose by trying something out.
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