Snapshot Guide To Anonymizing Your Web Surfing
	
	*by Auralogic 09/05/03

Introduction

This guide is designed to help you to hide your IP Address (ie. Anonymize) your web surfing actvities in an effort to avoid people tracing you back to your ISP and to hide your location. In fact, if you are using Internet Explorer then any activities done within your browser will pass through the proxy first, thus protecting your real location.

Imagine a proxy as a computer between you and your destination:


    ------                                   ------
   |      |             -----               |      |
   |      |            |     |              |      |
   |      |----------->|     |------------->|      |
   |      |            |     |              |      |
   |      |             -----               |      |
    ------                                   ------

      you               proxy                target


We will be using a HTTP proxy for this tutorial, which will allow you to surf the web, or anything else you do in your browser, anonymously. However, any other activities that use your internet connection outside of your browser will be sending your 'REAL' ip address!

Stage 1 - Finding an active web proxy

Many websites offer lists of web [or HTTP] proxies [check out 'http://www.linkworld.to/proxyblind']. Web proxies can be identified by their connection port, typically 80,8080 or any other variation of the number 80 [except port 1080 which is used by a SOCKS server].

So, copy and paste the list of web proxies into your fav editor [eg. notepad] with the following structure;

12.13.14.15:8080
15.46.89.56:80
56.89.12.75:8080
75.56.12.448:8080

...and on and on!

Then save it, [eg. 'proxylist.txt']. Next, we need to check which of these servers are still working. To do this, you will need to download a proxy checker [I recommend 'AATools', however this is a commercial application...check out 'http://www.linkworld.to/proxyblind' for links to free and commercial tools]. Load, your proxy list [proxylist.txt] into the program and run the tester. The program connects to each port for each server in your list and attempts to establish a connection to a third-party site. Some proxies will allow you to connect [good!], other servers will be down [bad!] for one reason or another.

Now, once your program has finished checking the proxies, you should have a nice list of [good] http proxy servers.

TIP! Choose a proxy that has the highest bandwidth and/or ping and one that is preferably 'NOT' in your country!

Stage 2 - Configuring internet explorer to use a proxy

 - Open Internet Explorer
 - Surf to 'http://www.linkworld.to/proxyblind' and remember your IP and location at the top of the website
 - Goto 'Tools'
 - Goto 'Internet Options...'
 - Goto 'Connections' tab
 - Goto 'Settings', underneath REMOVE, next to your internet account. *NOT* 'LAN SETTINGS'!
 - Enter the HTTP Proxy Server IP or Hostname address in the Address box [eg. '12.13.14.15']
 - Enter the port number in the port box [eg. '8080']
 - Click 'ADVANCED' and verify the settings. I'll leave this upto you to customise...otherwise leave well alone!
 - Click 'OK' on all open screens
 - Restart Internet Explorer to make sure your settings are updated
 - Surf backto 'http://www.linkworld.to/proxyblind' and check that your ip and location has successfully changed

Congrats, you are now hiding your IP behind a HTTP proxy server.

A few final words;

You can now feel safe while sending emails through web-based email services such as YaHoo Mail or Hotmail.
	"	"	"   browsing FTP sites in your browser.
	"	"	"   surfing the internet.
	"	"	"   using web-based chatrooms.

However, this will not protect you from any other internet programs or activities outside of your browser.

By, far the best way to stay anonymous in your browser is to use a method known as proxy chaining, whereby, you guessed it, multiple proxies are connected one after another in an effort to make it more difficult/near impossible to trace you. I will cover this in another tutorial!

Another popular method, and by far my favorite, is by using a SOCKS proxy. Similar to other proxies however, this allows you to select the programs you wish to pass through the SOCKS proxy. This method requires a client application to be installed on your machine. You can also apply the 'proxy chaining' method described above. Don't portscan without one, hehe ;)

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