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There are many reasons one may wish to hide one's identity when using the Internet. Individuals may wish to anonymously post personal messages to a Usenet newsgroup, send anonymous e-mail or surf the Web without revealing one's identity. In some countries, writings critical of the government, such as exposing human rights abuses, are often illegal. The authors of such writings may face imprisonment, torture and even death. By posting anonymously on the Internet, important information can be brought safely to the attention of the world. Alternately, take one of the sexual abuse recovery newsgroups, where anonymity is common practice. If an individual were to post a message asking for support, saying "my gym teacher did it", and using their real name, they would be, potentially, vulnerable to a libel suit. Or imagine that you are an employee of a company that markets a defective product. You may want to issue an anonymous safety warning without fear of loss of employment. As a final example, anonymous Internet communication was used successfully to launch the Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood, an organization that believes that Witnesses "should have a free choice in their medical treatment without controls or sanctions from the Watchtower Society that could separate them from their religious community or Jehovah's Witness family members and friends." Their Web site (www.ajwrb.org) offers a private and secure virtual conference room for members to carry out sensitive discussions without fear of reprisals. In fact, their efforts may have had an important effect on church doctrine: as of June 2000 Witnesses are now allowed to receive hemoglobin-based synthetic blood (but are still not allowed to receive packed red blood cells).
One technical solution to achieving Internet anonymity for messages is to use an anonymous remailer. Such a service gives you an anonymous address, to which other people can send you mail that is then forwarded to your real address. This is sometimes referred to as a "pseudonymous" server. Alternately, similar services are available to post or mail your messages without any trace of your name or address. For more information on this topic I recommend an excellent anonymous remailer information resource by André Bacard, the author of "Computer Privacy Handbook" (http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html).
For anonymous Web surfing, Anonymity 4 Proxy (A4Proxy) is an example of a special software package known as a "local proxy server", in this case available as shareware for download from http://www.inetprivacy.com/a4proxy/. It includes a database of hundreds of anonymous public proxy servers located all over the world. With A4Proxy, "you can scan each server, check its response time, confirm its anonymity, and test its speed in connection with the Web site or ftp-server that interests you (HTTP, HTTPS (Secure HTTP) and FTP are supported)." Users can choose the best service as their default proxy, or select the option to use a different proxy for each request. Advanced features "allow you to actively hide yourself while surfing: A4Proxy can generate a unique IP address for each request, selectively modify HTTP variables, block cookies, and more."
Services available at http://www.anonymiser.com include dial-up Internet service in the United States, Canada, and Japan in order to provide private access to the Internet. The providers of this service claim that many Internet Service Providers "are in the perfect position to collect and sell information about their users' activities", and that their service will appeal to persons concerned about this possibility. It is even possible to anonymously offer Web pages to the public through anonymiser.com. Such services would appeal to individuals who wish to put up a Web site that cannot easily be traced to the owner.
Of course, there are also less than honourable reasons why someone may seek anonymity, such as not wanting your boss to find out you are posting to alt.sex.bondage during working hours, or issuing a false product safety warning with a view to lowering the value of a company's stock. The potential for abuse is enormous. A visit to http://www.privacyworld.com, a business operating out of Malta, provides many other not-always-legal scenarios where anonymity may be desirable. For instance, the Privacy World site offers to show you how to "protect your assets from tax-hungry authorities or ex-spouses" and will even provide information on getting anonymous cell-phones and anonymous credit cards (the latter are in a false name and will cost you $3,000 US). A visit to http://anonymity.com will even provide information on anonymous medical testing, just in case you are not sure that your urine is free of cocaine. (Their motto: Remember... you’re just a number to us!)
As a result of the growing use of anonymity over computer networks, there is continuing debate about how best to prevent abuses without stifling the right to speak anonymously. Space prohibits a lengthy analysis of the issue. Interested readers will find the following resources to be of value in exploring this debate more fully:
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