Guide To Anonymity And Security On The Web

What we present here is a brief guide to retaining anonymity and security while surfing and communicating to others on the internet.

Here are the best of the bunch and what's more they all offer free versions !

Security

Zone Alarm (follow link, then go to bottom of the page)
Keep hackers and data thieves out of your computer with ZoneAlarm, the award-winning PC firewall that blocks intrusion attempts and protects against Internet-borne threats like worms, Trojan horses, and spyware. It will also track IP addresses and tell you what the intrusion attempt was for.

Ad-aware
Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility designed for all Win9x / ME / NT40 / W2000 / XP platforms. It scans your system for components of known spyware parasites and lets you remove them safely. Should be updated and run regularly.

SpywareBlaster
Blocks access to your machine by thousands of sites who are trying to steal your imformation. Best used in conjunction with something like Ad-aware which you can use to scan your machine for spyware nasties. Should be updated regularly.

Anonymous Internet browsing and E mail.

www.idzap.com
IDsecure & IDseal from IDzap ia a very effective way to maintain your anonymity when you're browsing and sending E mail. IDzap encrypts all data going to and from your browser, so your information remains private, and it even replaces URLs and site names in the browser's history with nonsense character strings. IDseal email is so secure that even the IDzap people cannot read your encrypted email. You may read basic details on the open source cryptographic engine combined with 128 bit SSL encryption and how it all works here www.idzap.com/howidsealworks.php

www.anonymizer.com
Anonymizer.com provides a secure tunneling service. This creates an encrypted connection between your system and the Anonymizer.com servers, allowing you to send e-mail, post messages to newsgroups, and browse the Web anonymously without even your ISP being able to snoop on what you're doing. Anonymizer.com's encrypted URL option encrypts Web addresses in your browser's history list.

Anonymiser also offer a Privacy Diagnostic test for you to see how vunerable you are. It can show your IP Address, Hidden Tracking Files, the contents of your Clipboard, your hack & exploit Vulnerability (this test managed to create a new directory on my desktop with various files from my system inside !), Browser & OS information, my Geographical Location and details of my Network. www.anonymizer.com/snoop/test_ip.shtml