Tips for Surfing the Internet Privately

The Internet is a wonderful thing. We can look up anything we need to know, do research for school, go shopping for anything from the smallest item to a house and car, you can find old friends and find out who your ancestors were, find out about a person's past and what is going on in their lives now. With MySpace, Twitter and Face book, you can even know what kind of mood your friends and relatives are in at that very moment. What else can the Internet do for you? Do you love to travel? Where do you want to go, how much do you want to spend, how will you get there and what do you want to do when you arrive? Where will you stay and for how long? What credit card will you be using? All of your plans can be tracked; by websites, hackers, identity thieves and many others. How can you keep your personal and financial information private? Here are a few tips.

When you go online, your computer has an IP (Internet Protocol) address. This is your personal location; your house or work or wherever you use the Internet. It is identifiable by hackers, websites and anyone wanting this information for whatever purpose they have in mind. There are hacker programs that someone can use if that is not that good at hacking themselves yet. Web servers that you visit have your IP address and that server keeps that in their logs. When you realize just how much of your information is available on the Internet and how many companies and hackers may have access to your information it can be very scary. The other people that use your computer are also making you vulnerable to attack.

If you are familiar to the term proxy, a proxy server can keep you Internet experience anonymous. You find a proxy server that meets your needs and then you logon to that server before logging on to the Internet. The only IP address visible to websites or anyone else trying to get your information, will the IP address of the proxy servers. Only the proxy servers information is available and your identity is masked through encryption, and SSL technology and SSH tunneling. SSL connections will start with https in the address bar and two layers encrypt messages; only the recipient knows the private key, the other is the public key. SSH tunneling is to create encrypted network tunnels for unencrypted messages.

Another thing you must be weary of is malicious software. Malicious software, in the form of adware, viruses, and spyware and Trojan worms are installed on your computer without you knowledge or consent. There are individuals out there that record your keystrokes and can access you passwords or account information that you input to banking sites or credit card information when you make an online purchase. There is anonymous surfing available on the Internet with free software offered on many sites or you can buy a program or service that will protect your privacy and information from getting into the wrong hands.