How private is my browsing?

Hello everyone, new to the forum.

I do all my websurfing at free wifi locations. Like many on wilder's, I am a privacy idealist, and hate the fact that the websites I visit are tracked no matter how innocuous they are. My goal is to surf using HTTPS and encoded url's whenever it is possible. I like to use ixquick as much as possible with their proxified search results under encoded url's. I also have my cookies shut off when surfing.

My question is... how protected from "sniffing" and MITM am I when browsing under HTTPS with encoded urls using highly anonymous proxies?

I realize doing email and flash and logins are different concerns , so I like to concentrate on WEB SURFING ONLY for now.

Thank you all and am looking foward to learning a lot on wilder's.
this is my browser setup:
Firefox Portable with cookies disabled and cache set to zero.
extensions: noscript, ghostery, betterprivacy, addblockplus (easylist+easyprivacy+malwaredomains), HMA proxy ext, and a few more.

 

Even from a free Wi-fi you might just want to run a mac address changer so as never to be trackable via your Network Interface Card (NIC) under the guise of plausible deniability.

Then again, if you are completely paranoid - consider a different personal disguise so you personally cannot be identified via video camera tapes (each time) at the free Wi-Fi location. They're everywhere these days!

-- Tom

 

If you use HTTPS no one but you and the website can view the data unless someone manages to crack the encryption or hack a certificate. If you want to hide who you are from the website than TOR is a good option for that.

 

The only issues with TOR is that 1. It's horrendously slow. 2. You have no idea who else you're connecting to. Lately every time I've loaded up TOR, MBAM's malicious IP blocker goes off like crazy and I get a lot of hits from NATO C3 in Peerblock and TOR. Granted the C3 issue doesn't worry me since I know what that's about, but it would scare the crap out of anyone else

 

Thanx for the responses. I was thinking the same thing about changing the MAC address occasionally. Does anyone know of a program or an ext for firefox that does this easily?

 

This one is free.

http://download.cnet.com/Technitium-MAC-Address-Changer/3000-2085_4-10554920.html