The proxy marketplace is filled with lots of companies.  We have a number of quality competitors that I know and respect.

Unfortunately, the anonymous proxy world overall is a scary place.  Many of these proxy companies are out to take your money one way or another.  Remember that when you are connected to an anonymous proxy server, everything you do goes through that server.  Do you really feel comfortable putting your personal information through a server owned by a company that may not be legitimate?

Before you buy anything online, make sure that you know who you are doing business with.  That is especially true with proxy companies and even software companies.  If you install something on your PC, then you are granting that program access to all your information.  Again, maybe this is not a big deal, but I like to know the source of anything I install on my PC.

One way to learn more about a company is to read their privacy policy or terms of service.  Then you can look up the company to learn more about them.  If you can’t find company information, run, don’t walk away.

On a related note, we get a lot of phone calls from people before they sign up for our service.  I think this is mostly to reassure them that we are indeed a real company with real people who stand behind our products.  Think that’s silly?  Try calling some of the other proxy companies out there.

Stay safe by knowing who you are doing business with.

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We were able to fend them off for some time, and did so quite well. It wasn’t until the 911 attacks that we faltered. These terrorist attacks jaded our nation and knocked down our confidence. It was similar to the Titanic; the impossible and the impenetrable was broken down. America seemed like a huge fortress, but some ramshackle terrorists were able to infiltrate it and deal us some swift damage. This woke the government up, and made them protect America even more diligently, and think of many new ways to do so.

Some of these ways have been met with some controversy from the very people that is sought to protect. Perhaps the most noticeable and complained about is the ridiculously tightened  up security in the airports, where the 911 attacks originated. Instead of just having to go through a casual bag check, you now have to go through a long line waiting for the x-ray machine to be scanned. On top of that, people must remove shoes, purses, and sometimes even belts in order to be patted down.

Another aspect of security is not so blatant. The fact that the government can view or intercept anything that we do or say via the Patriot Act concerns many privacy advocates. While it is indeed the government doing so and not some malicious hacker with the intent to steal an identity browsing through your documents, and it is safety’s sake, it still is a bit worrying to know we are being watched in a Big Brother-esque manner.

While there is not much to do from having the government perform surveillance on you, you can stop your snooping neighbors, or an identity thief. Using a private proxy server will allow you to surf the Internet anonymously, and with strong encryption software, there will be no way anyone could intercept your transmissions!

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There are two sides to this argument; one says yes to the cameras, and one says no. The side supporting the video surveillance says that the threat of cameras watching employees will stop them from doing anything the company would not support. Also, it takes out the risk of trusting an employee with too sensitive of a task. The other side says that this trust is exactly what makes an employee loyal; if they are being watched all of the time, they won’t feel trustworthy themselves. Also, it just isn’t right to perform monitoring of someone without them knowing, and you know the employees wouldn’t know.

There was a court case recently that explored this issue. Two young woman who worked in a company building to help reestablish orphans and underprivileged kids lives back together shared a cubicle in their office space. The two woman one day discovered a video camera in their office, and complained to the manager, who did nothing. They then went to court, and after a long deliberation, it turns out the cameras were only on after the pair left work. Upon this point, the women lost the case.

This begs the question; who was right? It could go both ways; one could say the girls were right because, in their testimonies, they were often there after work and even claimed to changing for the gym in the office. The employer isn’t completely at fault here though, for he just wanted to protect his computers, and make sure nobody was breaking in at night. Obviously the girls lost the case, so surveillance won out.

When dealing with online surveillance though, the answer is always no; often times it is a hacker doing the watching too. To avoid these problems, try using an anonymous proxy server to encrypt and encode all of your transmissions. A private proxy server will also ensure anonymous browsing on the Internet as well, so that hacker can’t perform any surveillance on your browsing.

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While this data should never be handed over willingly, this just recently happened. A cheerleader at a school in Mississippi was demanded to hand over her FaceBook information to her cheer-leading coach. The cheer-leading coach heard about this girl making a fuss about some internal politics of the team, and figured the information would have been conversed about on FaceBook. She was right; the girl surrendered her information and the coach found the conversation and alerted the rest of the school faculty. The girl was quickly reprimanded for her actions.

This seems wrong, and it is. The girl was forced to give up her personal information for her FaceBook account and then her account was hacked during school hours and on school property, then she was punished for her speech. This is unconstitutional, but unfortunately happens often on the Internet.

This was a willing transaction though. This girl had a choice in the matter, as most citizens do not. One does not choose to be hacked or intimidated into it. People feel very safe with their pre-installed firewalls and virus scanner programs, but these are not safe at all. Hackers know that most people just stick with these programs and therefore they know how to hack them quite well. They usually try and avoid anyone who has bolstered their security whatsoever. Why go after a hard target? That’s the life they chose; path of least resistance.

To protect yourself more fully, try exploring your privacy setting and turning off cookies and cache. A cookie is a little piece of data a website puts on your computer to track you and your activities on the site. A cache is actually a memory data base that holds a copy of all of the websites you visit that can actually help the site load a bit faster upon your next visit. Both of these are archaic technologies now that computers are so fast though, and just represent safety hazards.

To even further protect yourself, try using an anonymous proxy server. These will ensure anonymous browsing online by giving you a secure tunnel of access to go to all of your Internet sites through. These private proxies also come with an encryption service as well, which will encode all of your data so that any identity thief will be baffled by your hieroglyphic data. This is the best way to protect yourself, and you can bet hackers will steer clear of someone under the protection of a proxy server.

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