We live convulsive times in which no one trusts anyone on the Internet. The revelations of Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, the constant hacking of all kinds of services, from Yahoo! to websites of infidelities, show us that all our movements on the internet are spied for political, security or advertising reasons. And these are just legal intrusions while the cybercriminals also try to illegally access our data online.
Is it possible to surf anonymously on the Internet? Probably not. But at least we can make things more difficult for experienced intruders and completely block advertising espionage and other simple intrusions. The simplest way to be anonymous on the internet is to use a proxy web website.
What this website does is the act as an intermediary between our connection and the internet. All the online data inputs and outputs that we request pass before by the web servers, which are those that are identified on the internet in our name. This way our IP address is hidden, and who access to the internet is really the IP address of the web proxy. If your servers are located in Holland, then your IP address will be Dutch, confusing the advertising bots and spies.
Most proxies deactivate JavaScript, videos and other modules of the websites that compromise your privacy, although they usually include the options to activate them. The price to pay for using a proxy is that you navigate more slowly, because all of our data has to pass through the proxy website servers. The free ones are sometimes saturated with people and are inaccessible for a while.
There are literally thousands of free proxies. Keep in mind that all our data will pass through their servers and although they supposedly do not spy on them, we have no way of knowing. Therefore, we must be wary of proxies that do not have a security company behind or show much advertisements. You can search in forums and social networks and check the proxy websites yourself, of course, it will take a great deal of time to find the good ones. You should also know that some websites block proxies. If you cannot get into one, try a different one.
To find out if a proxy works, go to it and access a reliable website to check your IP address, which shows your location according to your IP. If it is a different place than yours, it means the proxy website is working. To help you save time and effort, you can check out this list of free proxy websites.
Keep in mind that a proxy only anonymizes the use of the browser. Other online services like email, connection through applications, etc. are not protected. If you want complete anonymity, you need a VPN service. Every proxy hides your IP address, but only some encrypt the addresses of the websites you visit, so use the ones that do so.
