Hide My IPHow anonymous are we on the web?  Would you believe that almost anyone could pinpoint where you live within a few kilometers based on a set of numbers reported by your computer?  Depending on how powerful our lawyers are, we could then take those numbers and get more information about you such as exact address, credit information and a whole lot more.

Every web page we visit, email we send, and file we download can be tracked back to us through an IP address.  A unique series of numbers that millions of electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other over most computer networks, including the internet.  I’ve spoken to quite a few people that don’t like this fact, and often become quite defensive about their privacy.

I don’t blame them.

There have been ways to get around this problem for years, but it hasn’t been too easy for the everyday user.  Luckily, there are now ways for almost everyone to hide IP addresses.  Using a customized version of FireFox from Hide-My-IP-Address.com, users can feel secure in the knowledge that their web surfing will be anonymous to every site visited.

This works by routing all your surfing through an anonymous proxy server, which not only masks your location, but your identity and even browsing history.  What I find quite interesting is that this will even work from a USB stick.  One huge advantage here is the ability to surf effortlessly from work.  If the administrator at your employer is blocking sites through some kind of firewall, you could be able to bypass these security measures since you would be accessing the sites through anonymous proxies.  If I had known about this program several months ago, it would have saved quite a bit of time and hassle every time I needed to browse the MSDN libraries.

Before Hide-My-IPWith Hide-My-IP

With the above screenshots, we can see how the tool works.  The image on the left represents browsing without Hide-My-IP, and the image on the right is with the custom FireFox browser.  The first image shows that with our IP, we can pinpoint it to a city.  The second shows that the GeoLocation software available can’t identify where we are.

If you’re concerned about people collecting information about your online habits, this might just be the solution for you.

Download Hide-My-IP Address here.