How to Stay Anonymous Online

incognito

Learning how to stay anonymous online is an essential in this post-Snowden revelations world. The tools that you need to use are out there if you know what to look for. Best of all, the average person can use them effectively with a little bit of knowledge.

This guide seeks to give you anonymity on three levels, and covers all of your online activity. Each level offers you another type of protection, making sure that your information doesn’t leak in any way.

Staying anonymous online: Anonymous browsing

The first thing you will want to do to enjoy anonymous web browsing is to hide your IP address. As you can see with our IP address location tool, any website can find out exactly where you are. This information is tracked by any number of online services, but you can change your IP address in one of three ways:

  1. Use a web proxy server: This essentially allows you to pretend to be someone else. By using a web proxy server you’re putting your Internet connection through someone else’s server, and taking their IP address instead of your own. You will find hundreds of web proxy services, and most of the well known browsers feature an extension that will let you do it. Reliability is a major issue here as a free service gives you what you pay for.
  2. Use a VPN provider: A VPN operates much the same as a web proxy, but with much higher reliability and anonymity. It works by connecting your public Internet connection to a private network with its own IP address. Most will have thousands of IP addresses to use, and will offer servers in dozens of countries. Check out our Top 10 to start learning what else each provider can do for you.
  3. Use TOR: TOR stands for The Onion Router, that’s why their logo is an onion! The logo illustrates the hundreds of different proxies that a user’s connection is routed through. You can think of them as similar to a VPN, but with a much steeper learning curve to use it.

Staying anonymous online: Anonymous communications and email

communication

Your IP address can be hidden by using proxies, VPNs, or TOR. Sending messages, and using email, however, is a different story. What if you want to message someone but you don’t want the receiver to know your email address? A number of tools are available for this task. These tools can come in handy in a number of legal situations, like when you’re communicating with your (divorce) lawyer:

  1. Use a forwarding address: A forwarding address will hide your actual email address by routing anything you send through another email address. This will cause the person receiving your email to only see the address of the forwarding account, not your own account.
  2. Find a disposable email address provider: You can do this by either creating a brand new email address and using it for a short time, or by using temporary email account providers. People commonly do this to sign up for things that require an email verification, when they don’t want to be spammed on their actual email account. 10 Minute Mail is a popular provider of this service.
  3. Using HTTPS Everywhere: This browser extension will add an extra layer of encryption, that is freely available, to all of your online communications. You’ll know it’s working when you see the ‘s’ on the end of HTTPS in your address bar. It isn’t 100% reliable, but it does increase your anonymity when sending messages.
  4. Install PGP software: Using HTTPS will encrypt your data on the network level, but PGP will actually encrypt the information you’re sending itself. If you’re the victim of a man-in-the-middle or Fake WAP attack, the hacker will be unable to read the information they steal as it will be a series of indecipherable characters.
  5. Use an anonymous chat client: There are two main chat clients to use right now; TOR chat and Cryptocat. Both have high levels of encryption, and hide anything you say over them completely. Be on the lookout for Facebook’s rumoured anonymous chat as well.

Staying anonymous online: P2P sharing and file transfers

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P2P file sharing, both in a legal and illegal context, is incredibly popular online. While it’s easy to find all kinds of different files to download, it’s also easy for companies that issue DMCA warnings to find out who you are as the downloader.

Here are the two ways to stay anonymous while doing P2P file sharing:

  1. Using a proxy or a VPN will be fine if you’re using a file hosting site like MediaFire or Mega. Your IP address will be obscured, and you can’t be traced. Be sure to choose a VPN that allows P2P sharing such as CyberGhost and Private Internet Access.
  2. For those using BitTorrent specifically, you can still use a VPN, but BT Guard is another good option. Be aware that it only helps you with BitTorrent, and doesn’t offer you the diverse protection of a VPN.

Staying anonymous while file sharing is nearly the same as staying anonymous while browsing. The addition of BT Guard gives you a specialist tool with limited diversity.

Summary

There are three main activities that you need to be concerned about anonymizing when you’re online:

  1. Browsing
  2. Email and communications
  3. File sharing

This article has given you the tools to stay anonymous for each one. The link that you can find between all three is using a VPN service. You can learn more about reliable VPN providers on our home page. While there you can also learn about all the other things that a VPN can do to keep you anonymous, protected, and safe online.