If you read last week’s article on privacy and security then you have a pretty good idea where this series is heading. Last week I introduced the basic topic of online security and privacy and focused on the advantages of anonymous web surfing.If you read last week’s article on privacy and security then you have a pretty good idea where this series is heading. Last week I introduced the basic topic of online security and privacy and focused on the advantages of anonymous web surfing. We covered the basic privacy issues that arise from unmasked IP addresses, and we discussed some basic scenarios where anonymity might prove important to an adult webmaster; but we did not discuss any of the technical solutions that are available to address these privacy issues. If you want to surf the web with any degree of privacy, you first need to find a way to keep your IP address hidden from the websites that you visit.

This is where proxies come in.

Think of a “proxy” as a computer that will act as your “middle man” for any data transactions that you complete on the web. It sits between you and the websites that you visit, requesting data on your behalf, receiving that data, and then delivering it to you. Here’s how this works:

Let’s say you want to visit the ESPN website’s home page and you have configured your browser to work with a proxy server. You type in “www.espn.com” into your browser’s URL locator. Your browser calls up your proxy server and says, “Hey man, give me a large www.espn.com and a side of fries.” The proxy server then goes to www.espn.com and obtains the desired information – in this case the home page – and passes that information back to your browser.

What have you accomplished by adding this middle man to the process? Well, when ESPN looks at their logs to see who just downloaded their home page, they will see the proxy server’s IP address – not yours. You have successfully masked your IP address from the web server that you visited. There are a number of free “anonymous” proxy servers that you might use to accomplish this kind of IP masking, but keep in mind that using these free proxy servers does not guarantee your complete privacy. It’s true you have hidden your IP address from ESPN, but let’s discuss some of the remaining privacy issues that you have not addressed.

First of all, how much do you trust the owners of the proxy server that you’re using? Remember, every website you visit could be logged by the owners of the proxy server – and are they more trustworthy than ESPN or whoever else you were visiting? The proxy sever will know your true IP address as well. And does the owner of the proxy keep logs? If so, there is a record of the sites you visited and the information you requested through the proxy. In addition, your ISP can still monitor your activities, as can any other server between you and the proxy. Let’s tackle this latter problem first.

The way to make certain that your ISP cannot keep track of your web habits is to initiate an encrypted connection between your computer and your proxy. You can accomplish this through the use of the protocol S-HTTP, which stands for Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Some proxies will allow S-HTTP connections, and others will not. Find one that does and data will be encrypted from the moment it leaves your computer to the moment it arrives at your proxy – data sent from your proxy to your computer will also be encrypted. S-HTTP is the same technology used by banks to protect your financial information from hackers and snoops as it passes from the bank’s site to your computer, and it is also used on most adult site sign-up forms where credit card data is being collected. Of course any data traveling between your proxy and the web servers you visit (such as the ESPN site) will likely not be encrypted – unless the destination site also uses S-HTTP to deliver the requested pages – but anyone who intercepts your data at this point will not be able to attach it to your IP address, only to the IP address of the proxy. That still leaves us with an important question: How much do we trust the owners of our proxy server?

Obviously if you have personal knowledge of the trustworthiness of the people who operate a proxy then you’re in great shape. Most adult webmasters are not in that position, however. The solution then is to look for a company that makes privacy their bread and butter. A well-known company that makes its living promising anonymity to its customers would know the potential penalties – meaning loss of customers – if it failed in providing the services that it promised. In short, you’re going to have to put your faith in somebody so it might as well be someone who has as much or more to lose than you do if your privacy were compromised. One of the better-known privacy companies is Anonymizer.com, which offers a variety of different privacy solutions and one in particular that I would recommend.

Anonymizer.com’s “Total Net Shield” is probably the package that you would find most useful for your purposes. It does not suffer from the same performance delays that many have noted with the cheaper “Anonymizer 2005” package, and it provides a more complete service that includes anonymous newsgroup posting and reading, as well as a means to protect your email from any monitoring activities that could take place either on the ISP level or by another member of your local computer network – including your boss. More importantly, it covers the basic privacy concerns that we have been discussing here today throughout this article in regards to anonymous web surfing.

Anonimizer.com promises that it does not keep any logs that could be used to determine the surfing activities of its members – meaning even a government subpoena would be useless in trying to examine your surfing activities. This is probably one of the best ways you can protect your online privacy, short of setting up your own anonymous proxy service. Anonymizer.com is big enough that any breach of its privacy service would almost certainly make waves on the internet, damage the company’s solid reputation, and cost it a significant chunk of business.

Even if you go with “Total Net Shield” package from Anonymizer.com, there is still the issue of browser cookies, which we raised last week. If a website tags your browser’s “cookies” file with a unique ID, as most websites do, it can at least distinguish you from other users of your proxy – even if it can’t link you to your IP address. But if you have volunteered information about yourself in the past, that cookie file is more than enough to show that website exactly who you are. Since turning cookies completely off can result in a number of problems, you have a couple of options: First, you can manually clear out your browser’s cookie file each time you turn off your computer. There are various privacy utilities available to assist you in automating this task. Second, you can set your browser to accept cookies only on a per-session basis. Meaning your browser will let a website set a cookie when you visit the site, but the cookie will be erased when your browsing session end – meaning next time you visit you will look like a brand new visitor to that website.

Before we wrap up this week’s discussion, there’s one more issue I’d like to raise: privacy can be big business. So far we’ve only talked about how proxies, S-HTTP and a privacy service can help protect your privacy – but what about the privacy of your websites’ visitors? It goes without saying that most porn customers like to keep their adult entertainment activities private. How many people have lost their job because some network administrator was monitoring internet use and discovered that an employee was visiting porn sites? How many husbands have endured wicked fights with their wives over internet porn? Privacy is a significant concern for many of the men and women who are visiting your websites each and every day – and if you can reach them with the information that we have been discussing here, you might stand to make some money for the effort. Most producers of privacy solutions are well aware of potential gold mine that the adult entertainment market presents – meaning, they’d like to do business with you. Anonymizer.com, for example, has an affiliate program that is open to adult webmasters who want to promote this service in exchange for sales commissions. There are links to the affiliate program on the bottom of the Anonymizer.com home page.

Anonymizer.com and other proxy services can help protect a surfer’s privacy from outside intrusion, but privacy can also be an internal concern. What happens if someone gains access to your computer directly, or hacks into your machine and takes your files? Again, there are privacy-enhancing steps that you can take to protect your privacy even if someone breaks into your house and runs off with your PC. Next time out we’ll discuss these internal privacy concerns and their possible solutions.

Connor Young is Editor-in-Chief of YNOT News. He has been involved with the online adult entertainment business since 1997, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Internet Freedom Association (i-freedom.org); He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. Connor can be reached at connor@ynot.com.