How To Hide IP Address
Before I will start the talk about the net security it's better to scatter the most stable myth concerning Internet anonymity. No, I do not want to say that people think it is impossible to get any information about a person through the Internet. I mean the next proposition: "I don't need anonymity because I have no "dark" deals. It must care the hackers..." And now think: is it good when strangers know your home address and want to enter your home without your permission?
They always follow you wherever you go and they try to find out all about you. I'm sure you won't be happy about it. So, tell me, please, why the majority of Internet users does not care about their security in the Net? Besides, recently more and more resources provide a man with different information according to home location. For example, a lot of US informational business projects do not show the most important data to people outside USA. Is it not fair? Not half! Today we'll try to correct this unfairness. If you know IP address of a computer you can know a lot of things about its users.
We start with the theory of the nets in general and the Internet in a particular. To be definite, we begin with the rule of addressing uploaded information packets. So, when you type some address in a browser line, the request first of all is sent to the DNS server which transforms the symbol string into the set of 32 zeros and ones (0, 1) - IP address which is used for routing. If an intruder knows that address he/she can hook out a lot of information. For example, real home location. Or with the help of whois service which defines user's provider easily by his IP address. Well, how can you protect yourself? For that reason you should hide IP address.
Proxy Server
Exploring how to hide IP address with proxy server which is something like a mediator between the user's computer and the Net servers we have discovered the "betrayer" - IP address which can be deleted in no way because of data routing necessity. But the proxy server sends requests to the web server itself. And it gets all information in return. That's why at first blush the usage of proxy - anonymity guarantee. But it's not so easy. It transpired that the majority of proxies sends final user IP address in a special field (x-forwarded-for). Honestly, there are anonymous services but it's hard to find them. But if you find such a server you can hide IP address and use the Net. By the way, you can check any proxy for anonymity on the site http://www.proxylist.com.
Anonymizers
Anonymizer - an anonymous proxy server which has its own web interface. And it's very easy to work with it. All you need is go to the site, put necessary address in the special field - that's it. After that server will hide IP address. Then the requested page downloads. You can be sure that you are secure.
But there are some disadvantages:
- Download speed of pages can slow down appreciably
- Most of them are high-priced
Nowadays it's practically impossible to find a good anonymizer for free. Of cause when they had just appeared nobody could think about selling. Maximum that the owners could allow - to set some advertising banners. Now users do have to pay to stay unnoticed. Incidentally, there are a lot of people who stand on the fact that anonymizers are not legal and should be stopped. But, of cause, it's flimflam because then we should also stop periwigs industry because criminals use them to change their exterior.
Now we know how to hide IP address, but there are other more effective ways to lurk. The most famous - cookies technology. Frequent, people use Cookies technology in cunning purposes. What is it? Cookie - is a symbol string (4 KB) which a server writes to the specific file on a PC of a user. This technology was developed for convenient Net working. For example, E-shop can remember a user and offer him/her to take a look over some new products according to his/her specific preferences. A special access limitation has been set to save all data confidentiality: only that server that put the data in the cookies can read them in the future. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a piece of cake to bypass it.
Think back, what do you see on almost all web pages in the Internet? That's right, banners and visitors counters. Aptly, most of these elements are downloaded from their own servers. Therefore a visitation counter script situated on the number of sites can easily write down and read the data from the cookies. As a result a system has an opportunity to follow your web rote or to learn your web habits. And this, in its turn, is the natural lurk. Do you agree? You should Hide IP address! There are different services that can hide IP address but I know for sure just one which uses GUI interface and has no equivalents - Arovax SmartHide.
Arovax SmartHide
SmartHide is a kind of anonymizer but it has no web interface. It uses simple interface and looks like any other software that a user runs everyday. Just one button click is needed to hide IP address. You can Hide IP address for free with this software. There are a lot of services with web interface but it's a matter of fact that they provide not all what they say. Furthermore, with the simple software like Arovax SmartHide you shouldn't fill the fields all the time. It will hide IP address absolutely for everything including ICQ, browsers, IRC, Email, FTP, etc.
Socks
Socks technology is a secure tool that provides anonymity in the Internet. We are talking about socks-protocols. A working principle of this technology is similar to the proxy server's one. A socks-server receives computer user's data, sends it to the web-server and retargets returned data back. There are several serious differences, truly. First - "communication" between a client PC and a socks-server is served not by the common protocols but by the special ones (socks4, socks5, etc.) As a result user's IP address transfer is impossible in principle. Moreover, a socks-server transforms the users' information into requests for the accepted protocols itself. That means that no other server will guess that it sends the data not to the final user but to its mediator. It's quite enough to download a special utility SocksCap provided by Company NEC USA, Inc. Install it, run it, choose the software which should be secured. (Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox), put in socks-server address and a port. That's all - now you are in safe while using the browsers.
That's all there is to it, I guess. I have presented all most famous ways which can be used in order to make a user anonymous in Internet space for today. Of cause, the situation changes all the time and new developments appear each day, that is why if you want to be protected and anonymous while surfing the Internet try to follow the latest news concerning computer security.
Gloss