Internet Anonymity Concerns - Hiding Your IP Address

Internet Anonymity Concerns - Hiding Your IP Address

The article is brought to you by NetConceal Anonymizer, leading
Internet Privacy solution, acknowledged by tens of thousands people
around the world. Check out http://www.net-conceal.com for details.

In today´s world of globalization and wide spread of computers,
Internet has become increasingly popular way for communication, for
expressing yourself, for sharing your mind with everybody. Popular
types of resources include web blogs, instant messaging, chats, forums
and many others. Just a few clicks and everybody in the world knows
about your point of view on politics, culture, science, relationships,
whatever, since quickly evolving technologies bring Internet to
millions of people around the world.

But no good comes without bad. The worst thing to consider about many
modern technologies such as Internet is a complete lack of privacy.
Sitting at the front of your computer screen and surfing the net you
are being watched constantly, by many people and organizations,
interested or not. How is it possible? Let´s see.

Internet is based on IP - Internet Protocol - special network protocol
designed at the beginning of 70s for U.S. defense purposes, but has
become widely used solution today (take a look at Internet History for
more information). Basically, most today´s computers are connected by
IP, and its extension, TCP/IP. We will not dive into details of TCP/IP
here, but rather give a short explanation and point to major privacy
concerns. Main idea of IP protocol is a set of independent nodes
(computers) connected somehow between themselves, each node has unique
identifier assigned to it, and special rules exists which help
computers exchange data with each other through intermediate computers,
called "IP routers". The unique identifier is called IP address, and
every networked computer must have it in order communicate to others.
To view your current IP address, run "ipconfig" from command line under
Windows, or open web site like http://www.net-conceal.com or
http://www.ipexposed.com.

Ok, but what´s wrong with my IP address? Like a regular address (e.g.
your postal address), IP address identifies your location, no matter
how you are connected to the Internet. For example, DSL connection from
your home is managed by ISP (remember, you have to sign agreement with
ISP, and your actual and billing addresses are there). Wireless
connections, such as GPRS or WiFi are being tracked as well (GPRS
stations are able to determine your position with a mile precision,
WiFi are even more location-bound), and service providers always
register and identify you as a subscriber. Try web sites like
www.ip2location.com to see this in practice (the information is not
exactly precise in all cases, but remember, technology improves
daily!).

Every time you surf the Internet, your IP address is publicly visible
to everyone on target network resources, therefore, your actual
location and even name and age can be tracked as well. Of course, this
costs something (they need to contact web site owner or hosting
provider, and ISP or WiFi access point owner), but interested parties
can implement this fairly easy. This is very serious point to consider.
For example, you submit blog article, and express your opinion about
politics, criticize something or make really controversial statements.
That´s was just an opinion, relax, everybody. But someone, being, for
example, a religious fanatic or simply paranoid, can find you and shoot
you right at your home. What´s the hell, why? That´s true, simply
because he knows EVERYTHING about you, your IP address, and thus your
name and physical location, since all web sites keep logs of IP
addresses accessing them (once you submit your post, web site records a
number of entries in its log file, putting together your post and your
IP address).

Just for demonstration, 4 simple steps to know everything about
specific person:

* Retrieve web site logs (not a problem for site owners, they
already have them). How can these logs be retrieved by anyone? Simply
by contacting web site owner, and many of them will give theirs logs
away with easiness, don´t worry. Just send e-mail using published
contact information (click link like "Contact Us"), write words like:
"Some guy who is using your site is suspected in credit card fraud, he
has stolen my money already!", or "The person with nickname
´blackjack´ from your site is promoting child porn, we need your web
site logs for investigation, thank you." and 99% - you´ll receive
desired logs.
* Analyze logs. For example, get timestamp of specific blog post
and search for records matching this timestamp, then compare URLs of
web site request and extract IP address from log entries.
* Obtain IP address owner (the Internet Service Provider, ISP). Use
www.ip2location.com, it displays ISP. For well-known ISPs like Verizon
- you´re almost done. Otherwise try looking it up in Google and find
their web site. Half an hour and you´ll surely find it.
* Contact ISP, supply IP address, and say something like you did in
step (1), and they´ll easily reveal user of their IP address, because
they don´t want problems with that user. That´s it.

Is there any way to protect you against this? Relax, really good
solution exist and the rest of this article will point you right there.

Basic idea of all privacy solutions is faking of your real IP address.
How is it accomplished? Solution is based on intermediary computers,
which are placed between you (the person who wishes to hide himself
from everyone) and target web sites (and other network resources - such
as instant messaging, file sharing etc). Those computers are called
´Proxy Servers´. How does Proxy Server work? Very simple: it´s just
like a very simple tunnel between you and web site, all data sent by
you to web site or received by you from web site are passed through
proxy server as is, using special SOCKS protocol (don´t mess with foot
socks, it´s just a coincidence :). What´s the difference? Exactly,
target web site sees Proxy Server IP address, but not your real IP. And
web site logs keep Proxy Server IP but not your real one as well. Sound
great, but how to use this?

Anonymous Proxy Server lists are published throughout the web on
special web sites, for example www.proxyblind.org. Actually, proxy
server list looks like a simple sequence of IP address : port number
pairs, for example:
123.43.12.96 : 1080
98.15.13.17 : 1080
150.19.87.31 : 1080

Choosing proper Proxy Server from such lists can be a tedious task,
some of them may be valid, and some are not. You just test them one by
one, select valid ones and save them for further usage. This work must
be repeated each time you want to use proxy, since Proxy Servers get
closed very often. After choosing proper Proxy Server, you have to
connect your application (web browser, instant messenger, whatever) to
it and work. Try configuring your application for use with proxy
server. For example, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ support SOCKS proxies, but
some programs do not. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox web
browsers also support this, but you must select another kind of Proxy
Server - HTTP proxy (in opposite to SOCKS proxy).

Special software was developed to address the issues listed above -
NetConceal Anonymizer, it keeps you free from manual proxy server
checking, SOCKS configuration and supports ALL applications. Actually,
a few clicks to hide IP address and become anonymous.

Download NetConceal Anonymizer now and try it. Once the installation is
done, NetConceal Anonymizer is started automatically, now click the
´Launch Web Browser´ or ´Launch Other...´ buttons. Proxy selection
is done within a minute, then application is started and you can use
the Internet fully anonymous, since your real IP is invisible to
everyone. Too good to be true? Please try it before criticizing.

To learn more about NetConceal Anonymizer software, check out the
http://www.net-conceal.com web site and contact us if you need more
help, we are really glad to help you with evaluation and ongoing usage.

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