You don’t need to have evil motives for wanting to fake your identity or go incognito online; for many people, it’s a matter of privacy and avoiding spammers and scammers. Thankfully, there are a great many tools for staying anonymous online. Here are a few of the best. More »
One of the more striking local examples of how Google’s real-name only policy with compulsory first names and surnames can seem overly restrictive is when applied to traditional Australian Aboriginal culture, where an individual’s personal name is a single word. Google’s response? It might get fixed eventually but it doesn’t want to talk about it until then. More »
Got some web space you rent for a personal site? Good, then you can likely get around any restrictions your employer, school or other eye-shielding authority have wrongly put in your way with a quick PHProxy installation. More »
If you’re of the mindset that what you do with your BitTorrent client is your business and not that of people snooping, sniffing, and prying at your packets along the way, ItsHidden offers free VPN server to anonymise your activity. More »
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Ghostery alerts you when you visit a web page that uses scripts to track your information and browsing habits. The extension embeds itself into your status bar and shows you a list of all tracking scripts in a small notification rectangle in the upper right-hand corner of each page you visit. The idea is very useful in principle, but since the vast majority of web sites (including this one) are advertising supported, you’ll see the notification on every page load if you keep it enabled, which can quickly get tiring—preferably, you could toggle the visibility of said window. Still, if you’re worried about your privacy online, this extension is definitely for you. Ghostery is a free download, works anywhere Firefox runs. For more on keeping your data private, see our top 10 tips to lock down your data.
Ghostery [Mozilla Add-ons via Download Squad]Web application whspr! creates a private feedback form that you can share on services like Twitter without revealing your real email address. Simply enter your real email address, a description of what the form is for, and the number of days you want the form to be active. Once completed, you’ll be given a URL to the form to share with others. This application could be useful for job postings, blog contests or giveaways—pretty much anything where you’d like email responses but don’t want to give out an email address. If you want to send private messages instead of receiving them, check out previously mentioned Whisper Bot, or you can send your awkward messages anonymously with NiceCritic.
whspr!Windows only: OperaTor combines a thumb-drive-friendly version of the peedy Opera web-browser with transparent privacy through the Tor network. Other than a slight lag when first loading the browser—because you can’t see a lightweight proxy loading in the background—the Tor-connected experience was no different than loading regular Opera. That means no configuration or connection settings, which is great for private proxy newcomers. If you don’t dig the alternative-to-the-alternatives Opera browser, you can use previously mentioned PortableTor in connection with any portable browser you find out there. OperaTor is freeware, Windows only.
OperaTor [via Portable Freeware]
