Internet activity you ask? Why is this something that needs to be secured and password protected? The truth is, hackers can intercept your transmissions from your computer and trace you right back to the source. A hacker could actually find your house through these signals, and then you’d have more than data insecurity to worry about. Imagine if your child was using the Internet and a hacker traced them back to your house! Also, these hackers can place tracking cookies on your computer and track you all around the Internet.

The worst thing is though that this is hard to trace. The guys doing this stuff are well protected and make a living off of their thievery; they are professionals of an illicit trade. Often times these guys will steal someone’s identity and they won’t know it for quite some time. It is different than an average street burglary; they say “give me the wallet” and you know you are being robbed. While online, at least you don’t have to go through the treachery of a robbery, but have to be mindful of your documents and passwords, as they can be surreptitiously stolen right under your nose and you may only know after you get a ridiculous bill in the mail.

There are ways to get around this though, and ways to better protect yourself. Consider trying to keep all sensitive information stored in only one place; your head. Don’t store this stuff on your computer in case a hacker was to hijack your computer and search through your documents. On the same note, don’t stay signed into a website. This will allow a hijacking hacker to be right on your account, or even just an unruly child who took your computer.

While those are just a few ways to stay safer and more secure online, using an encryption service is by far the best. By paying just a couple dollars a month for an anonymous proxy service, you can kill two birds with one stone; get encrypted and gain anonymous surfing. By gaining anonymous browsing, you can be undetectable online and have your IP address hidden, so you can’t be hacked into. Encryption is when your computer’s data is actually encoded, so if intercepted by some foreign interloper, all it looks like is mush. This is great as a security measure; if the hacker gets through everything else and thinks he is at the gold mine of information, he will be dismayed to find out you have encryption services on your computer; he knows he is not getting anything from this computer!

This universal adoption of cloud computing among many different companies represents a serious privacy concern. First of all, these companies are no longer the ones protecting the information. When the data is stored on their own physical, private computer network, it would be significantly harder for a hacker to break in and steal all sorts of sensitive information. These things almost never happened.

Storing information online is always more dangerous than on a hard drive. Oftentimes, if a computer’s network signal is turned off, it is completely inaccessible wirelessly, which is how hackers get into computers. This way, they would actually have to physically break in, and that is way to much work and way to dangerous for your average computer criminal. Once the data is available online though, any hacker could surreptitiously break in just by getting the signal and then trying to crack one or two password blocks. Imagine if an online banking service began to utilize cloud computing, and a hacker were to break in: gold mine. That criminal just got access to thousands of bank accounts without even breaking a sweat.

This cloud computing and its dangers are a hot topic in the privacy world today. In fact, the social networking giant Twitter recently had a break in. Some hackers got into an employee’s e-mail account and they would have access to everything that a Twitter personnel would. Luckily, nothing came of it as the hackers weren’t very experienced and didn’t know how to get to the useful stuff, but it is the principal of the matter. Today; Twitter. Tomorrow; online banking.

There are ways to protect oneself from this though. If at all possible, try not to use sites that use these cloud computing systems. If it is unavoidable, then try not to give out too much personal information. Try using an anonymous proxy server for all of your Internet trafficking too. These will allow you a secure tunnel of access and ensure that you are browsing anonymously and help you avoid any privacy issues. Also, try and find a private proxy that offers encryption services. These high bit encryption that is offered on many fee-based proxy servers will turn all of your data into hieroglyphics to the average eye. God forbid a cloud computing site were to be hacked, your fake personal information could be seen, but your browsing history and communications would look like a random assortment of numbers and letters to the hacker, rendering it useless.

The Iranians today are blogging on FaceBook, sending anti-leader protest on Twitter, and Ahmadinejad is quaking in his boots. He is desperate to shutdown these opposing forces. These Iranians are headstrong; despite recent additions and blocks, their Internet activity has actually increased!

The most popular content on Twitter currently is related to these Iranians. Protests, photos, and imperative blogs have caught the interest of not only the citizens of Iran, but everyone around the world.

In a less-than-democratic nation such as Iran, holding public protests can have dire consequences, so a grassroots system has taken place; these new candidates for office are doing their protests and advertising online. One of these e-candidates is Mir Hussein Moussavi. One account all about him (Moussavi1388) has won over nearly 7000 fans, and meticulous updates and news spearhead the assault on a bad government.

Twitter isn’t the only thing these radical citizens are using to send their message, (Moussavi’s FaceBook page has over 50,000 friends), but Twitter is their main method of advocacy.

Surprisingly, Twitter is completely aware of the vital role it is playing for these rebels, and it completely supports them! Twitter had scheduled maintenance ready to go on Monday, but have decided to re-schedule it, because this is a vital time for protestors to be using their site.

The Twitter channel “StopAhmadi” is one dedicated to writings and people opposed to the embattled leader. They put photos and blogs about Moussavi’s views and theories and keep the public in the know about government wrongdoings.

Another channel called “PersianKiwi” is thwarting any censoring that Iran might instate on Twitter by getting the page via Google. They are blatantly ignoring any censoring that Iran might do, and simply moving to a different page.

While most people on Twitter are just using the site to post peaceful protests and the like, some are aiming for the government’s head. A user known as “DDOSIran” actually organized a “hit” on the government: flood its Internet site with so much traffic that it crashes. After the plan had succeeded, the username was deleted and never heard of again.

As the election began to dawn on Iran’s citizens, government censorship reached new levels of injustice. They blocked text-message services and even the instrumental Twitter for a time, hoping to throw off any more protestors to the current leader.

Some have found a way around these wrongful acts, and a proxy server is the most widely utilized.

Even Americans, who are so separated from the conflict, are helping out. Austin Heap of San Francisco has actually been setting up proxy servers for the Iranians to use, and advertising them on Twitter. At any given time, nearly 750 Iranians are browsing anonymously due to his benevolence.

Many proxy services are on the rise now, due to this massive Iranian censorship. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium, which was run by outlawed and exiled Chinese Falun Gong, has reported almost triple the traffic they would normally have, and most of it coming from Iran.

This censorship has become a silly game of whack-a-mole: the government whacks one thing the people were using, and they have to find another; a vicious cycle.

After a time, there will be no new thing for the people to run to, and the government will be too adept at sniffing these things out to spread any more protest news, or the people’s voice of Mir Hussein Moussavi. This is when the anonymous proxy will truly have its day.

If an American citizen tried to access Twitter, obviously they would be allowed in, as the U.S. is a nation free of censorship and other such blockades. Most of the time, in countries such as Iran, the blocking of these sites is instated by the government. This is where a private proxy would come in. By encrypting the data, they can bypass these blocks.

An anonymous proxy server acts as a middleman in the Internet exchange between the website and the requester. You ask for the website through the anonymous proxy, and they go and get it for you. This covers your tracks as well; if Iran  was to read all logs of your Internet activity, all they would see is the proxy site, visited over and over again.

This successfully completes the anonymous browsing experience. In countries like Iran, visiting certain sites can lead to a jail stint. By using a proxy, there will be no evidence that you ever went on a banned site.

Anonymous browsing, surfing, you name it, is essential for these Iranian protesters. This technology will exonerate them from the and will allow them to fight the good fight, without the risk of being arrested for their protests.

Even with this larger than life persona, these soldiers are just average people. They value family, happiness, and fun just as much as everybody else. When they signed up for duty, it was with the knowledge that they might have to leave their home for a long period of time. This is just part of the duty, but it doesn’t take away from the ache going away from their home and country will cause.

While traveling or being stationed internationally, some military members get homesick. If you are in a different country for an extended period of time, loneliness can easily dominate your trip. If soldiers begin to find themselves forgetting the smell of an old fashioned barbeque, or the pleasure of hanging out with friends and family, then maybe watching some good old American television is a great way to restore their morale.

Unfortunately re-runs of “The Honeymooners” get old quickly and can lead to a strange affinity for communism. Only kidding, but it can get boring.

Along came internet TV, a godsend to the nomads of the globe. Imagine a soldier’s joy when they get a chance to connect back to their culture, and feel at one with the U.S. again. They could catch up on affairs overseas, whether it is watching the stock market, or just to see what antics Britney Spears has been up to lately.

Soon enough though, media companies wised up, and blocked these homesick people from connecting with their familiarity. Media websites, just like TV, are sponsored by advertising. And most US advertisers do not want to show American ads to people in other countries, it’s a waste of their money.  So all these media websites had to do was read your IP address, which shows that you are not located in the U.S., and once confirmed you were blocked, you got the boot, and quite possibly a “this site has been blocked” message. What is a serviceman to do?  They’re still Americans, probably still a good target for the advertising, but due to geographic location, they are out of luck, right?

Wrong, a private proxy server is the cure to any military member’s intercontinental woes. The media sites that block out-of-country visitors can be defeated by use of a private proxy server. These servers can change your IP address to an American one, and the sites will give you your rightful access to their content. American Military are still citizens of the U.S., and their ability to surf the Internet freely should not stop even though they are away from their homeland.

So a proxy is a simple solution to bypass these virtual roadblocks. Here’s how it works. All Internet connections wear a nametag, (called an IP address) that contains information such as location, server ID, etc. When your computer pulls up to the online blockade, the blockade guard (the internet site) reads your nametag, and if you are not on the approved list, you are kicked out. The proxy would enable your computer to wear a different nametag, so that if you are in Turkey for example, the guard could be made to believe you are in America, and allow you access.

Just as important to our military members abroad, an anonymous proxy does as its name says it should; it keeps you anonymous. The soldier can surf all of the sites that he or she wants without fear of a foreign government busting down their door.  This is true if the proxy offer an encryption service, which encodes and convolutes all data that is entered or output on their computer. This way even if the local government monitored their Internet connection, they would find no incriminating information. Everything is encrypted and would be completely unreadable.

Military personnel around the globe are already using this technology when on Military networks. It makes sense that they should use it for their personal surfing too. An anonymous proxy is perfect for less-than-democratic nations that they are oftentimes stationed in. Censorship has run rampant throughout the world. Countries around the globe such as Turkey have taken the liberty (or lack thereof) to block sites such as the rebellious You Tube. An Oxford Professor even had his personal site blocked due to its conflicting beliefs to a famous Turkish Creationist. It is one thing when people are up to criminal business, but stopping people from reading the New York Times online, or just catching their favorite performance on American Idol again, should not be done. George Orwell would be rolling in his grave if he saw we hadn’t heeded the warning of the dystopian 1984.

On the subject of censorship, the use of an anonymous proxy will help get by government instated blocks. As stated before, our military personnel’s’ rights don’t go out the window just because he or she is stationed in some desolate country. They can beat the foreign censorship. An anonymous proxy will change the user’s IP address, and as before stated, can change it to a U.S. one. More importantly however, this technology is vital in countries where such Internet activities as YouTube are outlawed! Our military personnel don’t want to be incarcerated in a completely different country simply for his or her Internet viewing.

Some of these American military personnel area also business-minded while abroad. For some, work is more therapeutic than play. Instead of enjoying YouTube and other leisure sites, they are surfing the money-markets, doing investments, and staying up to date in the rapidly changing capitalist economy. Everyone knows how well some of these countries uphold and value public security and I bet they would have no ethical problem snooping on a few bank transactions, or some passwords to various sites. Not only is a proxy good for relaxing and reconnecting, it is necessary for doing business while in these ethically ambiguous places.

Everyone has felt the effects of homesickness; maybe you’ve had to stay away for a weekend on a business trip, or even felt homesickness on a leisurely vacation. This is not an imaginary phenomenon, and military personnel stationed outside the U.S. feel it every day. They need something to remind them of home, of freedom; something to look forward to. The endless days away from home seem to pass more quickly if they have a vision of home in mind. The Internet is a great way for them to connect with their culture they were pulled away from. Unfortunately, censorship, ridiculous laws, and other deterrents could stop them from using this comforting device.

An anonymous proxy will combat and effectively defeat this threat on their sense of belonging. They can go where they want on the Internet without being blocked, and without fear of a foreign police force arresting them for updating their FaceBook account, watching videos on YouTube. Proxies are the way for our patriots to stay sane on the forefront of battle, and keep them connected to home in faraway foreign lands.