To Be, (Anonymous) or Not To Be
Anonymity is important and is present everywhere in life. You can be anonymous in a figurative manner, like just one person in a crowd of thousands on the populous streets of New York City, or you can be anonymous just as a voter in a United States election. Can you imagine not being anonymous while you are voting? What about everyone seeing you pick your candidate of choice, and then having your name and choice broadcasted to the world? Voting is a highly personal act; no one can tell you how to vote, and only you can make the final decision of who to choose. People do not go around asking each other who they voted for; in fact, teachers and other educational staff are under oath not to tell for whom their sympathies and opinions lie, for they might influence their impressionistic students. If everyone knew who you voted for, life could be a bit dangerous. There are extremists of everything, and the political battle is no different. On both sides, there are people who might even kill to further their candidate and lower the opposition’s forces by one more. Voting is just one thing though, and anonymity spans a wide strata of daily life.
Think about being online; for most things and applications on the computer, you have a screen name, user name, log in code, call it what you will. This combination of numbers and letters is supposed to be a mask to hide you from the rest of the Internet, this is why you are advised or even forbidden to use your name or any other identifying details about yourself in your online name. Imagine if every one online knew everybody’s else’s real identity; the Internet would not run correctly! Who would sign onto the anonymous comment sites and share their real or dissenting opinion on some highly controversial issue if they knew everyone else knew who they were and they could be judged or get in trouble for their words?
The user name is not infallible however, and sometimes people can break through or decode it. Obviously if you tell a friend your name and user name this is okay, as you will have a certain amount of trust in that person and know they will not use it for ill means, but you don’t want to tell some random stranger about your life and personal details. Nor would you give them these details if they asked you directly. Directly is the key word here, as there are many ways to surreptitiously hack into someone’s computer and find out a bunch of information about them.
Don’t let this happen to you; don’t let a stranger steal your information. Use an anonymous proxy and ensure anonymous browsing through a secure tunnel of access for you and your family. By using your private proxy, you can surf the web anonymously and ensure that no one is sifting through your documents trying to steal information from you; or just trying to find out your political preferences!
