Cookies are little deposits of data a website puts on your computer every time you visit their site. These log where you went on the site, where you spent the most, what you looked at, and other things to pertaining to your site activity. They also save user preferences on log-in and password based sites, and even data from your word documents and other offline transactions.

Why do they do all of this? Well, for one they do save your user preferences, so maybe you can stay logged in until you sign out of some particular sites, and they can help bring you towards parts of the site you enjoyed. This is generally helpful, but these cookies can also be dangerous too.

Recently, a controversy has been brewing over the use of cookies. Some people go shopping on the Internet, looking for better deals by cutting out the middle man or what have you, and they do so looking for good deals. Recently, some sites have been using cookies and identifying which users have money and which ones don’t, and marketing their information and wares that way. This way, if a wealthy man had cookies on his computer of him buying off of an expensive car site, the merchandise he saw on the front page of a buying website would be different (and probably more expensive) than what others see.

When one is at work, the Internet can be quite a useful place. You can research up and coming products, view videos and tutorials on how t use them, and even keep a watchful eye on the competition so they don’t get a leg-up on you.  This would be a great reality, but the truth is, it isn’t like this.

The Internet, for all of its greatness, can be a very distracting place. While many workers use it for productive reasons, some just lollygag all day on it, and create a large loss of productivity among their company. It is for these workers sake that the Internet at work is usually highly restricted and censored. The same goes for school; if a paid worker is slacking off, imagine the apathy an unpaid student involuntarily put in a boring class feels!

This is why many sites are blocked while you are trying to surf them. Every worker has had some downtime, and bored, they try and log onto YouTube and gotten the “this site has been blocked” message. The company IT department usually is the one who arranges and sets up all of these blocks. They do so by finding keywords that they wish to block, and anything with them usually is. “Games”, “Videos”, “Fun”, and “Social” are some stock examples of what they block.

We live in an age of many concerns and fears. Children aren’t allowed to play outside anymore as they were ten years ago for fear of being stolen by some interloper patrolling the neighborhood. People are now given intensive scans at the airport for everything from knives, to drugs, to guns. Even your loved ones waiting to greet you are not allowed to come up to the terminals anymore, instead having to wait outside in the crowded lobbies and baggage claims. The Internet has also changed. Once there was only a few sites to go on, and nobody knew a thing about spy ware or malware. People sent e-mails and went on sites in a totally blissful and carefree manner, but that soon changed.

With the advent of the “Information Generation”, people flocked to the Internet for its unlimited resources and its great exploring potential. People began to have virtual lives online, living vicariously through games or social networking sites. The Internet unknowingly conglomerated with television through YouTube, and is currently putting television on its last legs. Even the drudging commute to work is becoming archaic, and being replaced by the coffee-fueled masses that earn their bread working from home.

America has always been a land of change, as well as freedom. Right now, we are in the middle of another Industrial Revolution; although perhaps it will appear in history textbooks as the Technology Revolution. As the people evolved and changed their habits, so did the inventive criminals. Crime has always been a plaguing leech on America’s side, but one that is inevitable by the amount of freedom each citizen enjoys. Although criminals are often stereotypically portrayed as completely ignorant, uneducated low lives, they know quite some about their art; it is their chosen profession. They follow people and find out where they are most unprotected and will strike there when the opportunity arises. They also factor in how likely it is that they will be caught.

When everyone began using the Internet, criminals began to see that this was an excellent new avenue for them to exploit. Instead of having to rob someone in a suspicious back alley or on a crowded subway train, they could do so surreptitiously online, without even a trace of fear. A robber mugging someone in an alley will be plagued by the screams of his victim, and most likely caught by police as he tries to escape. An Internet hacker who hacks into an innocent person’s bank account online will not have to worry about the victim screaming for help, nor about a quick escape. It is likely the victim won’t even know that they have been robbed until months later, and by then the criminals will be gone, without a shred of evidence left behind.

Although we enjoy things that, one-hundred years ago, people couldn’t even fathom, there are dangers that they couldn’t fathom either. Now that we have cars, people can commute to work faster and over longer distances than ever, but many people die in automobile crashes every year. Now that we have television, people can kick back and watch their favorite shows, but obesity has risen two-fold due to sedentary lifestyles. Now that we have the Internet, there is a wealth of information right at our fingertips, but there are legitimate criminals who try, and successfully do, steal identities and information every day.

For the last concern, many people turn to a popular service on the web called a proxy. There is a bit of discrepancy among proxy users and new prospects though: anonymous surfing software, or web-based proxy?

OK, have you ever surfed around the Internet and when you clicked into a site you’re met with the wonderful little message that your IP address has been blocked for one reason or another? If you haven’t ever seen this then you just are not doing enough Internet surfing my friend.

You can basically become blocked from visiting and area either from the server that you are connecting through or from the website you are attempting to connect to. There are a number of reasons for either of those possibilities. Perhaps the server you are on has blocked the website due to some unsafe activity on that website or perhaps the website has noted your provider as a known site which sends out a lot of Spam or other malicious email activity.

You are in luck if the website you are trying to visit has blocked you. All you need to do is visit it with a different IP Address and all will be good because the website will not recognize you by that address. Now how you do that is the subject of many hours of web hunting. The easiest way is to access the offended website using a proxy service.

Some may raise some eyebrows when “anonymous surfing” is brought up. Why remain anonymous unless you’ve got something to hide? Well, maybe not the same stuff they are thinking of, but I sure wouldn’t want to propagate my bank account information to every Google user!

The Internet is a great and very helpful place, but we don’t have to sacrifice our right to privacy when using it. Some ISPs store all of your information for up to 2 years! Some government agencies in the UK store all of the information in a large database forever.

Maybe having an ISP know what you are doing is not a big deal, but it is the principle of the matter. Imagine if someone hacked the server; all information, every website, password, social security number ever entered in the last two years would be at their fingertips! A bit scary when it is laid out before you.

American’s military is the glue that holds the nation together. National security is on every U.S. citizens’ mind, and this is only magnified in these turbulent times. These freedom fighters would give everything to help their country, and do so every day.

Though they may seem almost inhuman with their selflessness, these are just ordinary people. They love family, freedom, and happiness just as much as anyone else. While traveling or being stationed internationally, some military members can get homesick. This is perfectly normal, and happens to some when leaving on a leisurely vacation. Imagine the anguish of having to leave your country, and go off to some faraway land to fight!

Watching some familiar American T.V. is a great way to stay in touch with old Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, a man can‘t exist on “I Love Lucy” alone, and must supplement their viewing diet.

Internet T.V. to the rescue! Imagine the joy of a lonely soldier when he or she could access an entire cultural reservoir of familiarity. They could just catch up on the affairs back home, or maybe just see who J-Lo is marrying this week. Alas, it was too good to be true.

The Internet is probably the quintessential reason this day and age is called “the information society”. Everything is right at our fingertips, and is so easy to access. Instead of spending hours researching in a library for your research paper, you could simply do a Google search and find endless pages of information. Instead of drudging between houses during a yard sale, one can head to Ebay and find bargains and deals galore.

Infatuated with this great new invention, no one stopped to worry about the dangers it could present. Internet crime began to rise. People panicked, and with only rudimentary knowledge, didn’t know how to protect themselves. Some just gave in, and assume you had to be a genius to stay safe and anonymous on while surfing the web.

Where there is strife, there is demand for some benefactor to come along and rescue the oppressed. This hero turned out to be something intangible, but nonetheless, effective.

For months, Microsoft and bloggers have been discussing the added privacy features Internet Explorer 8 offers to its consumers.  In many ways, these changes are similar to Mozilla, Safari and other browsers have offered to the net surfers for a time.  IE8 centered its attention around the security and ease of use to users.  Some of the added features include InPrivate Browsing, Delete Browsing History, InPrivate Blocking, and InPrivate Subscriptions.  Other areas to include improvements in RSS, cascading style sheets, and AJAX (the information exchange).  Simply stated, IE8 is promising a safer environment for the surfer.

InPrivate Browsing puts you in control.  You have the option to allow Internet Explorer to save your browsing history, cookies and other private data exchanged on the net.  By having the ability to Delete Browsing History, you are able to manage whether or not websites that you have visited are saved.  While saving your website history may appear to be an added convenience for later use, this is not exactly a safe way to operate from a privacy perspective.

InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscriptions rely upon each other.  InPrivate Blocking advises you about any potentially harmful outside source that is in a position to view your browsing history.  Once the information has been relayed to you, you are given an opportunity to block the outside source.  This feature is Internet Explorer’s version of Privacy Mode, commonly referred to as “porn” mode.  InPrivate Subscriptions are a list of websites that you have created and named safe or unsafe.  If there is a site that you question security, you have the option of adding it to the blocked list.

The Internet can be compared to the old Wild West in some cases. You have criminals out in the digital world lying in wait for you.  Not Dirty Dans and Phillip McGees with guns ablazing, but worse.  Every time you open your browser you run a gauntlet of invisible cyber criminals longing to rob you of your identity, as well as treacherous ISPs and lurking marketing companies tracking, collecting and logging your IP address, following you like digital bloodhounds as you surf.  Many savvy surfers know one of the best ways to protect their Internet privacy and personal information is to use a proxy server.  Now, proxy servers can be located on the Internet with a simple search, but the question of the day is: Which is better? Web-based proxies or Anonymous surfing software?

Web-Based Proxy Servers
These web-based anonymizers are easy to use and only require you to have an Internet connection and enter a URL.  Give it a click and your IP address is replaced with theirs.  This can get you into a blocked website, like Myspace, but that is the main purpose of the online anonymous browser.  It’s not safe to send personal information over these servers because there is no guarantee that the information is encrypted, and if not, it can be accessed by some less than scrupulous person.  Also you cannot use web-based proxies to access banking sites or any other online location that uses either Secure Shell or Secure Socket Layer.