Anyone have any advice about Anonymizer?

[wakemewhenitsover]

Is it user-friendly, effective, etc.? Better alternative? Thanks!

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. I tried it,

and it totally screwed with my computer.

It was a bitch to uninstall, but the people were very nice, and refunded my $$$ immediately.

[wakemewhenitsover]

3. Wow. What did it do to your computer? Can you recommend...

...an alternative? Thanks.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

5. It froze it up, over and over,

so it was a constant rebooting, defragging, like that.

The alternative - suggested to me by the guy who handles my website, email, and all things geek, a real genius whose real job is overseeing the systems at a major corporation - is, believe it or not, AOL, which is known among the IT cognescenti as "The Great Anonymizer."

It conceals your ISPN very nicely, and, depending on how much you're going to use it, it's cheap. For me, the drawback is that it all IE, not Firefox, which is my preference.

But, give Anonymizer a try - you might have a very different experience. I have a pal who swears by it, and, as I said, the people at Anonymizer are very nice, very helpful.

Good luck.

[wakemewhenitsover]

6. Thanks a lot for the info.

What do you think about proxify.com?

[OldLeftieLawyer]

7. I know nothing about it,

but I did check with my geek guy about the anonymizer.com $29.95 plan mentioned below.

His answer was this, when I asked him if the yearly idea was any good:

"Yup, it can be good. Realize they're still subject to the same patriot act
requirements as any isp - so if the gov't wants you - they'll get you if
you're in any organized product from any US Company. Another way to do it is
to use proxies in a foreign country - but realize they may be intentionally
capturing and using your data.'

I might sign up for this. Thirty bucks a year is certainly reasonable, and, as I said, they were really good to deal with.

[wakemewhenitsover]

8. I'm just concerned about advertizers glomming onto my computer...

...and gumming up the works. Anytime I go to a commercial site to make a purchase, I notice my computer operates more slowly afterward. Let's say I buy a book from Amazon, and I don't want them to share my information and sell it to other marketers. Do you think anonymizer.com will work for that? Or what about Ghost Surf, which I think operates out of Canada?

[OldLeftieLawyer]

9. I buy everything online, and there's no need to worry -

I mean, we're being tracked, and there's nothing we can do. No program can keep your information from being sold to third parties, but you can check the privacy policy of anyone you buy from online, to see if they don't sell your information. I believe amazon.com doesn't, but you can find out.

Here's what I do (courtesy of my geek buddy), and it works very well for me.

Of course you have a good firewall and virus protection. That's real basic.

But, every night, I run Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/

and Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

and Spyware Blaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

These are things you're talking about when you think your computer is slowing down - these three freeware programs will take care of anything anyone might try to plant on your hard drive.

You're confusing spyware with companies selling your information. They're two different things.

Just download and use those three programs, and you'll be fine.

[wakemewhenitsover]

10. Great ideas. I'll check them all out. Thanks!

:hi:

[RobertSeattle]

2. I don't use their software

But I do have that 29.95 yearly account so I can send anonymous email to "certain" people and visit website that I don't trust.

[wakemewhenitsover]

4. How does the yearly account work?