Anonymous Surfing with and without Encryption
“I thought I was being smart, slick and protecting myself and my information online. It gets dull at work, and the company that employs me monitors what sites are visited at each computer station. So, I would access the shopping sites by anonymously surfing the Internet. I couldn’t be tracked that way. I believed any tracking cookies would be deflected by the free online proxy service. So, I purchased a few items by credit card, and visited a few other sites, logging in with my screen name and password, feeling I was safely, anonymously surfing.
How wrong I was. Two days later I received an email from my credit card company informing me my credit card was maxed out. This was followed by another card being used to its limit. Then I received another email thanking me for my business. Supposedly, I had borrowed five hundred dollars.
I was shocked and dismayed, wondering how someone had gotten my credit card information. I had been anonymously surfing. I was supposed to be protected.
Well, I wasn’t.
I knew what proxy service I had used when I was anonymously surfing, and contacted them with a complaint, letting them know my personal information had been stolen while using their free service. They wrote me back informing me that since I used their free service for anonymously surfing rather than their fee-based one, they were not responsible for my losses. I was furious, but legally there was nothing I could do. And they had the nerve to offer me a package at a reduced rate.
So I had to cut up my credit cards and dispute the charges. My credit rating dropped like a stone. I’m still trying to get the charges off my credit report. I can’t get a single credit card issued to me at this point. I also found out that access to some of my personal accounts had been changed as well, and spam posted under my name. When I tried to open a new account, I was blocked. Banned from most of the sites for spamming.
It was a nightmare. But I had to find out what happened, so I did my research. I only wish I had done it before this happened. It seems that anonymously surfing using free online proxies is not as secure as it seems. Your IP address is hidden, but the data that is sent to websites is not encrypted. Anyone who has access to the server can see all the information sent, collect it, record it and use it.
If only I had used a software-based proxy when anonymously surfing. Of course, I couldn’t have installed it on the company computer, but I also surf anonymously at home. I had been lucky up to this point.”
The point of this article is this: Be smart and invest in reliable proxy software when you want to go anonymously surfing on the Internet. I’ve done the homework for you and experienced the hardship that not doing your homework can cause. I wouldn’t wish this situation on anyone. I’ve learned the hard way that anonymously surfing on the Internet using free online proxies has a very high price. A very high price indeed.”
