There are many reasons why you’d want to browse anonymously. It may be that you’re scouring the Web in search of a better job, a divorce lawyer, or you’re just researching about a rare health condition that you don’t want people to know about.
Thousands of Internet users long to be able to browse the Web anonymously. When searching for sensitive information or commenting on certain blogs, most people prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons but mostly to prevent stalkers from seeing their online activities.
There are two important factors when considering privacy on the Web. The first factor is anonymity: this is essentially how to keep other Internet users from seeing the places you visit. The second factor is privacy: this refers to how to prevent other Internet users from accessing the information you post. Every user’s needs are different. While some care about protecting anonymity, others care about protecting both.
It’s easy to protect your browsing history on your personal computer: you simply enable ‘private browsing’ on your browser and all cookies, browsing history, and temporary files will be deleted when the browser window is closed. While this is straight forward on a personal computer, the story is different when it comes to online anonymity. There are many ways that your online activities can be tracked. Typically, your ISP will log all details and time stamps of your web browsing.
In addition, other third parties (such as online advertisers) can trail your activities using specialized software in order to serve you with targeted adverts.
Secure Your Online Activities With A VPN
While there are a couple of ways to hide your IP and browse anonymously, a VPN is the most reliable and secure way to ensure not only anonymity but also privacy, among other benefits.
Once you connect to a VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel through which your traffic is transmitted over the Internet. The new connection is between your computer and a VPN server that assigns you a new IP address (dedicated or dynamic) while protecting your real IP from being seen at the places you visit online. This ensures both privacy and anonymity.
A VPN will also protect your data when you’re on a public network that may not be secure, such as a Wi-Fi hotspot at the airport, café, or public library.
However, not all VPN service providers are created equal. If your major concern is total privacy and anonymity, you want to find a service provider that doesn’t keep online traffic logs. There are instances where your traffic logs can be turned over to third parties after a court order, for instance. This will ultimately expose your activities such as the places you visited online and when you visited them.
However, some VPN providers never store logs for more than a couple of hours. If you long for complete freedom to browse anonymously, you should do your homework and find a service that doesn’t store logs.
In all, a VPN service is the best and only way to browse anonymously without worrying about being trailed. It also ensures privacy and security of transmitted information from online threats.
