Anonymizer

An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the client computer's identifying information.

There are many reasons for using anonymizers. Anonymizers help minimize risk. They can be used to prevent identity theft, or to protect search histories from public disclosure.

Some countries apply heavy censorship on the internet. Anonymizers can help in allowing free access to all of the internet content, but cannot help against persecution for accessing the Anonymizer website itself. Furthermore, as information itself about Anonymizer websites are banned in these countries; users are wary that they may be falling into a government-set trap.

Anonymizers are also used by people who wish to receive objective information with the growing target marketing on the internet and targeted information. For example, large news outlets such as CNN target the viewers according to region and give different information to different populations. Websites such as YouTube obtain information about the last videos viewed on a computer, and propose "recommended" videos accordingly, and most of the online targeted marketing is done by showing advertisements according to that region. Anonymizers are used for avoiding this kind of targeting and getting a more objective view of information.

Sometimes anonymizers are implemented to work only with one particular protocol. The advantage is that no extra software is needed. The operation occurs in this manner: A connection is made by the user to the anonymizer. Commands to the anonymizer are included inside a typical message. The anonymizer then makes a connection to the resource specified by the inbound command and relays the message with the command stripped out.

An example of a protocol-specific anonymizer is an anonymous remailer for e-mail. Also of note are web proxies, and bouncers for FTP and IRC.

Protocol independence can be achieved by creating a to an anonymizer. The technology to do so varies. Protocols used by anonymizer services may include SOCKS, , or OpenVPN.

...
Wikipedia