People are paying for digital services with their personal information. This is only becoming worse. I am talking about smartphones, social media and online games. You pay with your privacy, whether you want to or not, because you have ‘’no choice’’. You just follow the crowd. Many people have an iPhone, use Twitter, play Wordfued or Draw Something. They also agree to a huge list of conditions (which almost nobody  reads), and give away all the personal information to a few American organizations who can do whatever they want to with your information. You tell them everything; who you are, what you like, who you know, what kind of music you listen to, and the movies you watch. But also; who you are mailing, what you write in a mail, your location and where you are going to. You tell them everything.

In the meantime you are being filmed by security cameras and other iPhones. You are in a video on YouTube, being tagged on Facebook, or someone is mentioning you in a blog or Tweet. All this information will be saved, exchanged and even sold behind your back.

The online privacy is getting more and more public. It is time for us to do something, or privacy as we know it today, will no longer exist in the future.

Major search engines have said they need to retain personal data, in part, to provide better services, to thwart security threats, to keep people from gaming search ranking results, and to combat click fraud scammers. However, major search engines often have retained this data for over a year, seemingly well beyond the time frame necessary to address these concerns. Some search engines have reduced the time that they retain users' IP addresses. Major search engines delete or anonymize IP addresses according to the following schedule:

• Yahoo-18 months
• Bing (formerly MSN/Windows Live)-6 months
• Google-9 months

Startpage (www.startpage.com), a search engine operated by Ixquick, based in The Netherlands, does not record users’ IP addresses at all.  The privacy policy was created partially in response to fears that if the company retained the information, it would eventually be misused. The company concluded, “If the data is not stored, users privacy can't be breached.”  Startpage will remove all identifying information from your query and submit it anonymously to Google. Startpage uses advanced encryption technology for your search queries.

DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/) is another search engine that, according to its Privacy Policy "does not collect or share personal information".  Their full Privacy Policy is at https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.

Online Privacy Tip:  It's a good idea to avoid using the same website for both your web-based email and as your search engine.  Web email accounts will always require some type of a login, so if you use the same site as your search engine, your searches can be connected to your email account.  By using different websites for different needs -- perhaps Yahoo for your email and Google for your searches -- you can help limit the total amount of information retained by any one site.  Alternatively, log out of your email and clear your browser's cookies (see Cookies below) before going to other sites, so that your searches and browsing are not connected to your email address.  Another method for preventing a search engine from associating your searches and web browsing with your web mail account is to use a different browser for your email account than for your searches and web browsing.

Online Privacy Tip:  Avoid downloading search engine toolbars (for example, the Google toolbar or Yahoo toolbar). Toolbars may permit the collection of information about your web surfing habits.  Watch out that you do not inadvertently download a toolbar when downloading software, particularly free software.

Online Privacy Tip:  Google combines information about you from most of its services, including its search engine, Gmail, and YouTube.  Be sure to disable automatic sign-ins by following the instructions at http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39273.  Also be sure to clear your browser's cache and cookies by following the instructions athttps://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050?hl=en.  While you must be signed in to access Gmail, most Google services can be used without being signed in to your account.

If you use a computer to access the Internet and pay for the service yourself, you signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP provides the mechanism for connecting to the Internet.

Each computer connected to the Internet, including yours, has a unique address, known as an IP address (Internet Protocol address). It takes the form of four sets of numbers separated by dots, for example: 123.45.67.890. It’s that number that actually allows you to send and receive information over the Internet. 

Depending upon your type of service, your IP address may be "dynamic", that is, one that changes periodically, or "static", one that is permanently assigned to you for as long as you maintain your service.

Your IP address by itself doesn’t provide personally identifiable information. However, because your ISP knows your IP address, it is a possible weak link when it comes to protecting your privacy.  ISPs have widely varying policies for how long they store IP addresses.  Unfortunately, many ISPs do not disclose their data retention policies.  This can make it difficult to shop for a “privacy-friendly” ISP.

When you visit a website, the site can see your IP address. Your IP address can let a site know your geographical region. The level of accuracy depends upon how your ISP assigns IP addresses.

You can block your IP address by utilizing a service based on Tor (such as iProxyEver) which effectively blocks this information.  Another alternative is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN replaces your IP address with one from the VPN provider. A VPN subscriber can obtain an IP address from any gateway city the VPN service provides.  

If you access the Internet with a smartphone or other mobile device, you may access the internet using a data plan tied to your cellular phone service or through a Wi-Fi hotspot.  If you have a data plan, your service provider (such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile) collects data about your usage. 

Anonymity when using the internet is a thing which can be taken for granted in today’s world. When a person surfs the web their computer is given a public IP address. This address can be used to determine much information about a computer which is linked to the internet. Information such as country of origin, state, region and city can be determined from an IP not to mention it can be used to track things such as what sites you may have visited while surfing the web. As a user of the internet you may not want to have such information readily available for anyone in the world to see and for this reason you may want to hide your IP address. You may ask, why would I want to hide my IP address while browsing the internet as I am not up to anything illegal. Many people associate hiding there IP address with hacking or other illicit online activities but the truth is there are a multitude of completely legitimate reasons why you may want to hide your IP.

• You may be connecting to the internet in a public area such as a library, restaurant, hotel or internet cafe and don’t want your surfing to be tracked by others.
• You may not want to take a chance on your private information being exposed so choose to surf anonymously.
• You may not want your surfing habits tracked by companies or online advertisers.
• You may go to a school or work at an emplorer or live in a country where web surfing is greatly restricted or content is highly filtered.
• You may want to access content that is available only to people in certain areas or countries.
• You just may not like the idea of possibly having your every move monitored and tracked.

As you can see there are many reasons why you would want to hide your IP that have nothing at all to do with illegal activity and are simply about protecting your privacy.


Ways To Hide My IP AddressAt this point you are probably wondering how do I hide my IP address? There are several ways you can surf the web and still remain anonymous so we have here are some pages that have more information about some of the methods that you can use to hide your IP.

• VPNs
• Proxy Servers
• IP Hiders

It is important to note that while these methods may hide your IP address and allow you to surf the web with more anonymity there is not really a way to be completely anonymous when connecting to the internet. Your activity and home IP can still be recoreded by what ever service you use to hide your IP so if you were to particpate in some sort of illegal activity these services could link those actions back to your computer.


If you want to be absolutely anonymous, you should definitely choose a proxy chain, in which usually more than 3 proxies are connected in a chain to protect your real IP address and location from being tracked. Tools like iProxyEver provides this kind of functionalities. 

People are lack of privacy on the internet nowadays. Edward Joseph Snowden told us it's time to be arlet and take action now to protect ourselves from network surveilance and traffic analysis.

• Web-based proxies: The most common and easiest to use proxy. These are servers that you connect to through a browser to visit a website anonymously.
• Open proxies: These are proxy servers that are either accidentally left open or are hacked. They are often not secure and can contain malicious software. It is recommended that you avoid open proxies.
• Anonymity networks: These are private networks that are run by users donating bandwidth. They are often incredibly slow and due to the fact that anyone can host bandwidth, they are fairly insecure.
• Paid proxy softwares, such as IP Hider Ever, is often used to hide your IP address so that you can hide your internet traffic and the real location while surfing the web. Softwares like IP Hider Ever makes nobody know what you do on the internet. So you can surf wherever you want on the web without worrying about any of the information leaked. But the question is still that whether you trust the software company.
• VPN (Virtual Private Network): These are private networks where you directly connect to a proxy server maintained by a proxy company or organization.
• Proxy Chain. Currently, the most untraceable VPNs use TOR, where all the network traffic is redirected to use TOR. This redirection can be done simply with the built-in system package iptables of Linux. If you do not want to setup the proxy chain yourself or using windows as your OS, softwares like iProxyEver can do all the job for you.