When it comes to data privacy, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to remain anonymous while browsing the web, and the truly paranoid will want to leave as minimal a click-trail as possible.
Anonymizer does as good a job as any proxy server we’ve seen. It hides your IP address by redirecting your web traffic through the Anonymizer 128-bit SSL secure servers, so the websites you visit see its generic IP address rather than yours.
An integrated antiphishing early-warning tool helps protect you from scams, and the latest Anonymizer works with Vista, too. On the downside, it costs $34 per year and, because your traffic is going through another server layer, it slows down the speed of your browsing.
www.anonymizer.comCost: $34/Year
Overall Rating: **** (4/6 stars)
Ultimately, if you want to protect your personal data, there’s one technology you simply have to use: data encryption. Your options here are as varied as they are baffling, but when it comes to value and ease of use few can compare to
the open-source hero
TrueCrypt.
This latest version is 32- and 64-bit Vista friendly, as well as being able to write data to removable USB drives and MP3 players. It can encrypt your data at the individual file level or entire hard drive, using 448-bit keys (Blowfish), 256-bit keys (AES, Serpent, Triple DES and Twofish), as well as 128-bit keys (CAST5).
It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, which can then be mounted as a real disk, and will happily create a fully hidden volume. It’s easy to use thanks to the Windows GUI, will run on Linux, and provides a much more secure environment for your data than, say, a CD in the post.
www.truecrypt.orgCost: free
Overall Rating: ****** (6/6 stars)
*PC Authority Recommended*