anonymous web surfing?

I am connected wirelessly to the Internet through our in home router. I dont want my internet activity to be viewed by other people in my home through sniffing programs and whatever other means. Does anonymizer.com's anonymous web surfing do this? What program do you recommend to prevent people from seeing your internet activity?

Thx.

 

15 views and not 1 reply... lets go people

right now i've done a bit of research and tor or jap seems to be the way to go.

am i right on this? does tor protect my internet privacy on my network too so that others in my home cant see it? and, is it compatible with vista?

 

There is no way to prevent everyone from seeing your web activity. Think about it: someone has to know where you are and what you want, else they can't deliver it to you. Namely, your ISP. That being said, there are ways to cloud things up a bit.

http://tor.eff.org/download.html.en

That link takes you to a set of programs, a bundle of Tor/Vidalia/Privoxy. Essentially, after install, you're simply using a proxy to connect. The nice part is that it's chained. Even better is that, provided you donate bandwidth, it's nearly impossible for anyone to tell what information originated at your computer versus what simply passed through it.
If you use Firefox, there's a nifty add-on called "TorButton". It does just that: places a little onion-shaped button at the bottom right of your browser. Run Privoxy, then Vidalia (with Tor set to start when Vidalia starts). When you want to connect to the Tor network, click the onion. When you want to disconnect, click it again. The Tor network can be very slow at times, almost unnoticeable at others. It depends on who you're connected to at a given time, and where your information is being bounced before reaching it's destination, then bounced back thru a chain to you.

As of right now, it doesn't look like Vista is supported yet.

Regarding others seeing, or capturing, information: assuming your network administrator has properly setup the wireless network (preventing someone from across the street, say, hitching on your bandwidth) you'll be about as safe as you would be hard-wired. Your bandwidth and speed might suffer, though, with the Tor network over wireless, due to the large number of connections it will undoubtedly make. But I'm no expert on wireless internet, so get some other advice for sure before taking that as gospel.

As far as I know, from researching and testing this same subject, all of those programs (Anonymizer, HideIP, etc.) aren't worth what you'd pay for them when you consider that Tor is free! But....if you have xtra bandwidth: donate!! That's how it works. W/out folks like us kicking some back, the network wouldn't exist for long. That, too, would be tough running wireless I'd imagine. I'd consider hard-wiring if at all possible.

Hope it helps and, like I said, don't take my advice w/out a grain or two of salt. I'm an electrician, by profession, but not a software-guru by any means. I've learned thru trial and error (the worst kind of instruction) what works and what causes me to have to reformat my computer! If you do decide to try out the Tor bundle, get everything running then visit some of those sites that attempt to check your IP, etc.

http://www.auditmypc.com/free-spyware-removal.asp

That's not a bad place to start. Turn off javascript as well, before you visit, and likely it won't be able to tell much of anything about you. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the in depth response. My connection here is open to everyone... there is no username/password here, so our neighbors could be hitching on our bandwidth for all I know. I'm just concerned about "snoops" in my own home, if you know what I mean. So Tor looks to be the best way to go with this.

Do you think Tor would function correctly on Vista even though it doesnt say so on their site? I emailed them but I doubt I'll ever get a response.

 

Tor on Windows Vista?

Anyone running Tor on Windows Vista? It doesnt say its compatible on the Tor web site but I'm wondering if it still works. Advice appreciated.

 

Re: Tor on Windows Vista?

Try it, click to see the onion (Vista Ultimate)