"Surfing the internet anonymously may be desirable to those who do not want their personal identifiable information to be easily accessible to either hackers, or even legit companies who like to use information about individuals for marketing purposes. Or it might be that someone might just want some privacy, or an employee who does not wish for their employer to track their internet usage at
. work.In order to use the internet anonymously, the IP address must be hidden. Usually, blocking the IP address is enough to allow the user to become anonymous. Deleting cookies regularly, or setting the computer to not allow cookies can help with anonymity. A very common way to surf the web anonymously is to use an anonymous proxy service. There are several different companies that offer such a service, some of which are offered for free, some have a cost, and others even allow you to customize to your specific needs. The disadvantages of using such a service might mean that the internet connection seems slower, due to the system searching for suspicious activity, pages may load improperly due to the system preventing a page to load as is, and there is some risk with some proxy services when making purchases online with a credit card, as some of these services require the information to be passed through an external server in order to maintain the anonymity."
