Anonymizers- Make your web surfing anonymous

• Anonymizers are services that help make your own web surfing anonymous.
• The first anonymizer developed was Anonymizer.com, created in 1997 by Lance Cottrell.
• An anonymizer removes all the identifying information from a user’s computers while the user surfs the Internet, thereby ensuring the privacy of the user.
  Many anonymizer sites create an anonymized URL by appending the name of the site the user wishes to access to their own URL, e.g.:
  http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.yahoo.com/
  After the user anonymizes a web access with an anonymizer prefix, every subsequent link selected is also automatically accessed anonymously. Most anonymizers can anonymize at least the web (http:), file transfer protocol (ftp:), and gopher (gopher:) Internet services.
  However, anonymizers have the following limitations:
  • HTTPS. Secure protocols like “https:” cannot be properly anonymized, since the browser needs to access the site directly to properly maintain the secure encryption.
  • Plugins. If an accessed site invokes a third-party plugin, then there is no guarantee that they will not establish independent direct connections from the user computer to a remote site.
  • Logs. All anonymizer sites claim that they don’t keep a log of requests. Some sites, such as the Anonymizer, keep a log of the addresses accessed, but don’t keep a log of the connection between accessed addresses and users logged in.
  • Java. Any Java application that is accessed through an anonymizer will not be able to bypass the Java security wall.
  • Active X. Active-X applications have almost unlimited access to the user’s computer system.
  • JavaScript. The JavaScript scripting language is disabled with url-based anonymizers
  Some anonymizer sites are:
  • Anonymizer.com
  • Anonymize.net
  • @nonymouse.com
  • Iprive.com
  • MagusNet Public Proxy
  • MuteMail.com PublicProxyServers.com
  • Rewebber.de
  • SilentSurf.com
  • Surfola.com
  • Ultimate-anonymity.com