How to Hide Your Online Identity – [Part 1]

Today we all are living in the World Wide Web era. As there are so many advantages of online world there are certain potential troubles too.

While you are surfing through unprotected (e.g.Public Wi-fi) network you can not guaranty that it will prove safe browsing for you and you will have all your personal information secure at the end of your browsing session. So, how can you tackle these problems?

While being Online your IP address is your identity. Here we are providing certain tips “how to hide your online identity”.

There are various tools, tips and tricks to hide your identity. It’s a subject that demands more comprehensive information so we have divided our post into certain parts. So, here you go for Part 1 of the series.

Before You Proceed:

CAUTION AND WARNING

We hereby caution our readers that tricks, tips and tools described in the post and those which will be informed in future under this series are just to make web user aware of Internet Security.

These techniques must be used for some important deeds such as while providing personal and financial details to a public server. Don’t use these methods to carry out illegal activities.

Proxy Servers

1. Website based Proxy Servers

There are certain websites which enable you to enter another website without revealing your Internet Protocol (IP) address. You have to just provide URL of the site where you want to land anonymously.
E.g. Proxify

2.  Proxy Servers that Directly Configures Browser

This is the most popular service used by many online communities. As these are used publicly they slow down your data transfer speed. Here we are providing tricks to use Proxy servers with various popular browsers.

• MOZILLA FIREFOX

1. Click Tools->Options;
2. “General”, “Connection Settings”;
3. Select “Manual Proxy Configuration”;
4. Enter proxy IP and port to appropriate fields;
5. Click OK to close Connection Settings;
6. Click OK to close Options;
7. Reload browser.

• GOOGLE CHROME

1. Click Settings-> options
2. “Under the Hood”, “Network”
3. Select “Change Proxy Server”
4. Enter proxy IP and port to appropriate fields

Various Types of Proxy Servers

• Transparent Proxy
  This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server and also makes the original IP address available through the HTTP headers. These are generally used for their ability to cache websites and do not effectively provide any anonymity to those who use them. However, the use of a transparent proxy will get you around simple IP bans. They are transparent in the terms that your IP address is exposed, not transparent in the terms that you do not know that you are using it (your system is not specifically configured to use it.) This type of proxy server does not hide your IP address.
• Anonymous Proxy
  This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server but does not make the original IP address available. This type of proxy server is detectable but provides reasonable anonymity for most users. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.
• Distorting Proxy
  This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but make an incorrect original IP address available through the HTTP headers. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.
• High Anonymity Proxy
  This type of proxy server does not identify itself as a proxy server and does not make available the original IP address. This type of proxy server will hide your IP address.