You may have heard about governments spying on foreign citizens or their own citizens in the news. Edward Snowden's revelations confirmed what many suspected about the NSA. They are actively employing a variety of tactics to collect and analyze user data, even going as far as coaxing top tech firms into handing over their users' data to the agency. This is a huge problem for privacy on the internet.
There are a plethora of reasons why you'd want to obscure your online presence. Certain communications between parties and the identities involved may need to remain confidential to protect the interests involved. Journalists, activists, and whistleblowers exposing the actions of corrupt individuals, organizations, and governments face censorship, legal action, imprisonment, violence, or even death.
Society imposes standards for what is acceptable and what is objectionable on everyone. If one's thoughts, interests or identity is considered to be improper, then the expression of these thoughts, interests, and identities become possible by means of anonymity without the harm and ostracization of the individual.
Before you even attempt to surf the web anonymously, you must first learn to alter your online habits. If you continue to use the same usernames and aliases as before, someone will eventually piece together your true identity. If you must register for sites you'll need to use alternate usernames, passwords, and user identities for each site that you use. This may appear to be excessive, but with a good password manager app, you won't need to worry about having to remember all of these details.
Avoid using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter since they actively track their users' online habits even when they're not on those sites. The same issue occurs with search engines like Google and Bing. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not track you and doesn't keep search logs.
You'll have to change the words and phrases that you frequently use since that may inadvertently indicate which part of the world you're from and the kind of social circles that you belong to. Slang, technical jargon, and key words may leak your true identity.
Some sites use auto-suggest to help complete your search queries, but this feature will transmit your keystrokes to a server. Therefore you must avoid typing in personally identifying information into search boxes with autosuggest. If you have the ability to turn off such a feature, do it.
Web browsers record your browsing history, remember form fields in order to automatically fill them in later, cache copies of images and data to load pages faster, and allow sites to store small amounts of data on your computer. While this can provide a rich browsing experience, these features can be exploited for the purpose of exposing your identity. Many web browsers now include some type of 'private browsing' mode that doesn't store this information.
Javascript is a programming language that your browser uses to allow for rich, dynamic web content. Without it, the web pages would be much simpler and less interesting. As important as Javascript is for the modern browsing experience, it is notorious for its use in tracking users. Although the language itself wasn't meant for this purpose, website owners can place tracking code on their web pages that dynamically reveal identifying information via browser vulnerabilities. By turning off Javascript, this code won't be able to load even if it's included. The downside is that some web sites require Javascript functionality in order to function properly. There are browser plugins, like NoScript, that allow you to selectively disable Javascript code so that the sites you use still work while disabling the tracking code.
Finally, all web browsers have something known as a user agent string that identifies the browser that you're using and your operating system among other details. Since this can leak your identity, it's a good idea to install a user agent switcher browser plugin that can change the user agent for you.
Proxy servers allow a user to access the internet via another computer by sending requests on behalf of that user. So instead of websites seeing your IP address, they see the IP address of the proxy server (which may be in another country). It appears as if the proxy server is the one doing all of the surfing instead of your machine. Many VPN providers that you see being advertised online, like HideMyAss, are really just proxy services with additional features. Even though proxies are quite handy for staying anonymous, it's very important that you trust your proxy server! You must make sure that the ones running the proxy server aren't collecting your data or eavesdropping. It's vital that your proxy doesn't keep access logs which could be handed over to authorities or leaked by attackers.
TLS is a protocol that encrypts Internet connections. Encryption is a technique where sensitive information is transformed to be undecipherable to unauthorized eavesdroppers, yet still capable of being read by the authorized parties. Modern encryption is virtually unbreakable if implemented correctly.
On most browsers, you can tell that your web connections are encrypted if the URL in your address bar starts with https:// instead of http:// and you see a green lock in your address bar. If you don't see a green lock or if the lock is red and there are error messages, then your connection may not be secure which may lead to your identity being leaked. Plugins like HTTPS Everywhere will automatically switch sites from HTTP to HTTPS, whenever possible.
Even though your IP address is masked when using a proxy, anyone monitoring your connection will still be able to see the data that's being transmitted if it's not encrypted. It's not enough for your connection to be encrypted in the middle. You must ensure that you're using end-to-end encryption otherwise, it's possible for an attacker to observe either your machine or the destination machine for data. Anything that you can see on your screen can be seen by anyone snooping on your connection. Email addresses, real names, usernames, passwords, and locations can be determined from unencrypted data transmissions. Because of this, you must never attempt to log in to a site via an unencrypted internet connection!
Tor is a network that is run by various volunteers around the world to keep communications private. Tor employs onion routing to protect data between your computer and the internet. Data packets are repeatedly encrypted so that nodes won't know what is being sent. However, there's one important thing to remember: the server that you're connecting to will have to be able to read the data that you're sending. So if you try to send unencrypted data to a server, then although it will be protected while tunneling through the Tor network, once it exits the network via an exit node, that data will be exposed to the exit node and destination server. Therefore, it's important to assume that anything that you do on Tor can be seen unless the data that you send is encrypted.
The Tor Browser is an all-in-one solution that includes software to connect you to the Tor network, a web browser capable of using, and a set of plugins to protect privacy. It's available in multiple languages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. This makes it easy to surf using Tor without having to install and configure software yourself.
Following these guidelines will ensure that you will be able to browse online anonymously without fear of being tracked, logged, or monitored by corporations and governments.
