Just as a public service, I thought I'd point out one way to avoid being tracked on the 'net. See, every time you connect your computer to the 'net, it is assigned an IP address. Like your street address, it allows people to find you easily. That's the problem. The thing with a real street address, you can go into a red light district and go to strip clubs or hang out with drug dealers and no one can trace you back to your home. Not so, with the web. Every web site you visit can (and most do) take note of your IP address. Even I do this at my site. Don't worry, I promise to never do anything with that info and usually delete my server logs (logs of IP addresses) every couple of months. So, how do you get around this? By using a proxy server. This is a server someplace out there on the 'net that has a different IP address from yours and actually masks yours from any place you might visit. Think of it as an envelope you keep your driver's license in. There's an address on the outside of the envelope, but it hides your the street address on your driver's license from anyone else. Where can you find a proxy server? Well, there's a new website for a proxy service called relakks.com that I found via [http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/15/pirate-party-lights-up-relakks-first-commercial-darknet/|a post at Engadget.com]. They charge 5 euros a month (about 6 or 7 US dollars after you pay your bank the international transaction fee) and they promise to keep all of your surfing anonymous. So if you're growing as paranoid as I am, you might want to think about using Relakks. I'm not using them because I hardly surf anywhere these days. One word of warning, their service is being overwhelmed with new customers as I type this so your connection through them might be slow. Give them time to expand and hopefully they'll be back up to speed soon. These days I can't help but wonder how much the USGov is following us around the 'net. First financial tracking, then phone tracking, it's obvious what's next.
Orignal From: Web Surf Anonymously...
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