5 Simple Ways to Become Anonymous Online

You don’t need to be a secret agent or a criminal with shady intentions to be interested in online anonymity. Actually, there are infinite reasons to be anonymous online. One of the most important factors for becoming invisible on the web is to get Internet freedom and knowing there’s nobody looking over your shoulder whenever you are online. Who wouldn’t want that?

But there are some essential “do’s” and “don’ts” that you should be following, even before you make the most of the following privacy tools for your web interactions. Firstly, you should hide your personal information from the general public for e.g. on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

For your ease, we have sorted out some simple ways in which you can show yourself as unnamed, while chatting, downloading, and browsing on the web. The guidelines described below will help you go online in secret, and avail the uncountable benefits of accessing data privately on web.

Getting Prepared For Going Anonymous

While you plan for going anonymous on web, there are some basics that you should understand. Firstly, you should know that every internet connection comes with an IP address. The data always move from a source IP address to a particular destination IP address.

Either you want to send an email, or share a photo with your friends; an IP address is just like your identification card through which anybody can access you with the help of your service provider.

Moreover, you should know that while surfing internet using a web browser (such as Firefox, Chrome, or Opera), a set of information is transmitted containing, browser information, system specifications, language and other relevant details. These details reveal your identification to the intruders and other internet users.

You can hide your IP address using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or a Proxy Server. More about these techniques in a minute.

Get rid of your Cookies

Secondly, wipe off all the cookies and change your user agent along with your IP address. In order to obfuscate your IP address, you need to access a service known as “Proxy”.

On the other hand, cookies and user agent can be adjusted through your browser configuration settings. The browsing history can be deleted by choosing the “Browser Options” from “Tools”, as shown below in the illustration.

Change Your IP Address

The simplest way to show invisible on web is to cover your IP address. This is mainly what a VPN and proxy server is meant to do. A proxy server configures your connection through a different server so that nobody could track you through your IP address.

You can easily look out for free proxy servers, available on web. Finding the right one for your system is just a matter of few clicks.

Use Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Virtual Private Network (VPN) is an alternative to proxy servers, and works in the same way as proxies do. If you sign up for a premium VPN Service you’ll get much higher connection speed and stability. A VPN is also more versatile in the sense that you can funnel your entire internet connection through the encrypted server, rather than being limited to a browser window.

For those who are not familiar with VPN, it is basically a private network having the ability to use public network in order to link remote users or websites together. Some of the prominent VPN services include VPN service providers, like NordVPN!

Use “The Onion Router” (TOR)

TOR is another useful option to get your IPs hidden. TOR is a network of servers that enables the users and groups to enhance their security levels on web.

In essence, TOR is more than just a secure web browser. You can easily search for this service on web, if you want to show yourself as unknown.

Things to be noted!

You should keep this in mind that using a proxy may not be good enough to go unnamed on web. If your system is equipped with non-open source code, then it may contain any default spyware program. Spyware programs can spoil all your privacy efforts.

Therefore, we recommend Whonix and Tails to our readers, if they are seeking for anonymous browsing. Tails is an anonymous OS that runs from a flash drive or a CD. The OS relies on TOR network in order to hide the user’s online identity. On the other hand, Whonix is based on a virtual machine named as VirtualBox which efficiently fulfills all the anonymity objectives.

Privacy is a growing demand for most of the internet users nowadays. Online anonymity is an amazing deal to secure your privacy concerns. By following the comprehensive tutorial described above, you can breathe with ease, and keep your eye on the ball with unknown identity. If you have any useful tips or tricks to stay hidden on web, we highly appreciate you to express your views in the comments section.