Just wanted to post that this is an outstanding product. You can get it for 50 bucks now/yr on the website. Support is great as well. Emails were responded to within 10 minutes Newsgroups are totally anonymous as well as my browser. No slowdown in speed either.
The only problem I have with Anonymizer is that it's quite well known around the net now and their ip address can and is often blocked or banned. I wish their ip address could change like Ghostsurf. With Ghostsurf you have many different ip addresses/proxies to choose from, with Anonymizer only one. I think it's better if an anonymizer has this ability to change its ip address. Unfortunately many more web sites are doing this blocking of anyone who uses an anonymizer. Even JAP (uses the same ip address depending on which mix you use) and Tor (to a lesser extent because your ip changes periodically) are now being blocked more often. I'm not saying Anonymizer is not good, just that it will probably be more useless as time goes on and more and more sites block or ban it. I hope they do something about this obvious problem.
168.143.113.110 (although it seems to change every few seconds...last 3 digits change) Thats my IP. An Apache Web Server page. LOL. Havent run into a single site yet that blocks me. This service rocks. 50 bucks for year too. DOnt ever pay 100.00....there is always a deal out there somewhere.
How did you get it for $50 a year? The cheapest I could find it is $60 ($59.95). I'm talking about Total Net Shield which includes Private Surfing 2.1 which is encrypted from computer to anonymizer servers. The "Anonymous Surfing" package is only an SSL encrypted proxy which does not shield you from ISP snooping. Which do you have? If you have the Total Net Shield - how did you get that price? A coupon code? I'm interested!
OOPS...my bad. 59, not 49 a year. Either way, good deal. This is actually the second time Ive used their service. 1st time I had a coupon code I found on the net. I searched and searched this time as well but found nothing. To be honest though....even 100.00 is fair although I wouldnt pay it...not for a service. 1 question though. Their tech support stated that the Anaonymizer provate surfing is redundant if you use TNS. TNS is all you need. I also have this toolbar on my browser (separate download) that has an anonymous surfing button (press it and you have to log in at Anonymizers site). Basically they said that you do not have to use that if you have TNS running. Is this true? I seem to remember using both in the past.
That's right. "Private Surfing 2.1" is a part of TNS. The basic "Anonymous Surfing" is not. You have the tunneling service which is the only way to go.
Another problem with Anonymizer is they keep logs! And those logs could easily be given to any third party, and who knows who that may be. I doubt it would take much for them to cough up your logs to any police or federal agency that came looking. Remember Anonymizer is based in the USA. As far as others getting ahold of that data that remains to be seen. I doubt it would be very easy to get your logs, but large sums of cash have been known to sway even the staunchest allies. I don't see how anyone could get your true ip when your going through their service though. There's no way your ISP could crack any of the encrypted data going between your computer and their servers. There's no way any web sites are going to be able to tell your true ip as long as your using their service. Only big brother is capable of getting your data/ip, which isn't anything I'm really concerned about anyway. So unless your concerned about big brother watching you then I wouldn't worry about others getting your true ip while your using Anonymizer.
Note that Java/Javascript can be used to obtain your real IP address if you are not filtering them. Use sites like BrowserSpy or Leader Network Tools to see what information your browser is supplying. Please note the comments about Ghostsurf's limitations near the bottom of page 1 of the Easy way to Block your Ip address thread.
There are different reasons to use an anon proxy service. The problem is that in most cases anon proxies are compaired without knowing for which purpose you use it. That idea is wrong. Your decision of which anon proxy you'll choose depends on WHY you need it.(and which country you are located) If you want to be sure that your ISP and the network you are on, can't snoop your data, and the website you are visiting can't see which ip you are from,but you don't care if the USA (NSA/CIA etc) can see what you are doing, then Anonymizer Total Net Shield is a VERY good choice. Because your data is encrypted from your pc to the Anonymizer systems. and your ip is hidden after that. But there are logfiles and Anonymizer has to give them, if let's say the FBI needs them. If you select an anon proxy that you'll find in a country which will not handover their logfiles, in most cases you have no encryption from that proxy to your computer. So your ISP can log your all you Internettraffic. And you can't be sure that the server is locateded in the country it seems to be. European law is changing at the moment, and it will not take long, before all european anon proxies need to have logfiles. This of course in reaction of what happened the last few years. So if you want to hide for the USA / European law, you can't select any of those. And again a server called (this is a fake example) abc.anon-prox.am can well be in the USA or in the UK. A well known story was in the newspapers in 2003: ------ In the Netherlands a company named Campina was being blackmailed by a suspect hiding his tracks using www.surfola.com. The dutch police worked together with the FBI and surfola.com to track the blackmailer. www.surfola.com handed over account information of the suspect to the FBI without a warrant. The lawyer of the suspect plans to sue www.surfola.com for breaking their own privacy policy: 1. SURFOLA.com will not give out your name, residence address, or e-mail address to any third parties without your permission, for any reason, at any time, ever. ------ So lot's of anon proxy services claim the HAVE no logfiles, or they will not hand these over ... but it that really true? And even anon proxies can be tapped/snooped. Insiders know that this already happened. In that case a user was using an anon proxy which had let say 100 active users on a certain periode of about 5 minutes. The data from the user to this anon proxy was crypted but tapped at his ISP. Data from the anon proxy server backbone was snooped. And that was not crypted, (but from 100 users). With time syncs and data-sizes was calculated which website was visited by that person. And again the person was tracked. Then there are people in some countries that go to a Internetcaffee, to find information on the Internet that they don't want to have logged at their ISP. And they don't care if the Internetcaffee has logged there data, because anyone can find that on the web. But they won't like to have thier name logged with that. And do you need an anon proxy for websurfing of email or chat or to send and receive data with another one, and you don't mind HOW the data is transferred. perhaps you just heed to encrypt your email and don't need a anon proxy. Or are you just afraid that anyone can steal your data, like creditcardnumbers etc. because that problem can also be solved in another way.(in most cases). So compairing JAP with TNS or TOR with Ghostsurf is a bit a .... without knowing where you need it for. BTW TNS does slow down your connection (all anon proxies do) I have a license meself (and lots of others) for testing. (i forgot to talk about proxy-chaining and proxy-roulette)
