Lance Cottrell
I
would like to explore certain sites that advocate extreme political views. How
can I do this and keep my identity secret? If
I may, I'd like to answer your question with another question:
Q. What do nude volleyball and the Web have in common? A. Both offer the
same amount of privacy.
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Original Anonymizer.com Website, early 2000's. |
Internet anonymizers are services that make your web browsing (and sometimes
other uses) as anonymous as possible. Email anonymizers are
discussed
on the remailer page.
Web anonymizers set up a secure connection
with your computer, surf
the
sites
you wish to visit on your behalf, and then pass back the results so no one
knows which sites you visited or what you've read or seen.
The first Internet anonymizer was Anonymizer.com,
invented in 1997 by Lance Cottrell during studies towards a Ph.D. in Astrophysics
at the University of California, San Diego. Cottrell is a noted privacy advocate
who also invented the widely used Mixmaster remailer,
and established the Kosovo Privacy Project enabling individuals to use
anonymizer services to report from within the 1999 Kosovo war zone without
fear of retaliation.
Many other anonymizers have since been developed, many
with
free services. The following sections provide more information.