Every internet has to understand the importance of anonymity on the web. The blend of physical and digital reality has many advantages, but even non-tech-savvy users can tell you that privacy is not one of them. Quite the contrary, with all the hardware in our living space, no one is truly alone, and anyone can be watched at any moment.
Importance of staying anonymous online
The devices we constantly use are trackable by their IP address. With every move and being monitored and information collected, it creates a more comfortable living. However, with IT companies constantly pushing for convenience, technologies take away our solitude. Many users feel that the disregard for the human need for privacy shows signs of a dystopian future.
Table of contents
Anonymous P2P communication
P2P proxy networks
Tor browser
Understanding the importance of anonymity online helps us use legal and appropriate tools to protect our network identity. Private proxies are often used as intermediary servers that mask your IP. Read more if you are interested in protecting your public address. With tech and social media companies in possession of the majority of our personal data, the least we can do is limit the transparency of our internet activities.
Anonymous P2P communication
If we all shared our IPs and used each other’s devices as proxy servers, no one would be able to track our location or activities. Anonymous peer-to-peer (P2P) communication lets us connect with other internet users without the need for a central server that can monitor, store, manipulate, and sell your information.
P2P is important because it gives the power back to your hands. We, as users, have a right to our data. Deciding who sees and uses sent packets is all up to you.
Seen as a necessity for internet anonymity, P2P also takes better care of our security. Data is no longer stored on servers that receive constant cyberattacks. Decentralization of stored information creates many insignificant targets instead of one big fish for a hacker. Also, P2P encryption builds a safe communication link that brings much more security and independence.
P2P communication creates reliable meeting points for information sharing. Users that do not trust the other participants can hide their identity with private proxies.
Global connection and the free information on the internet lead us to the subconscious support of gigantic centralized platforms. Those that captivated the attention of users the most ended up with endless streams of user data – today’s most important resource. These centralized information monopolies can use their power to gatekeeper competitors from emerging. A shift to P2P communication can limit their influence and bring more fair competition with respect to user experience and privacy.
P2P proxy networks
Thanks to the cooperation between users, we have P2P proxy networks where everyone chips in to access the web via a secure and dynamic network. Some companies even pay users for their IPs and bandwidth – the necessary contributions that ensure everyone’s privacy and anonymity.
Directing your traffic through these networks is comfortable for simple anonymous browsing, but with so many people hopping on these connections, they might be unreliable for automated business tasks. Web scraping, social media operations, and limited product copping depend on the stability of a dedicated private proxy.
P2P IP networks also let us reach geo-blocked websites on the internet. Because it is built from residential addresses from real ISPs, you will rarely encounter blocked websites.
Despite all the apparent benefits, it is hard to rely on companies to do the right thing and properly utilize your IP and bandwidth. Giving up valuable information and resources for
money can be dangerous. Simple P2P connections with private proxies are very beneficial, but P2P proxy networks are too unreliable.
Tor browser
The extent of tracking and even government surveillance has never been visible to the public eye until NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks. But together with shocking information about citizen mass surveillance, Snowden highlighted the effectiveness of an important internet anonymity tool – The onion router (Tor).
Tor browser is a free tool that ensures anonymous communication by directing traffic through an overlay network consisting of thousands of nodes to conceal your location and IP address. Developers of Tor believe that internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.
Uneducated users might think that Tor works like a VPN. Although they seem similar due to encryption, VPNs only encrypt the connection between you and the intermediary
server. Most of them do not offer full privacy, because a VPN company can cooperate with law enforcement to backtrack the connection and expose the user’s activity. Tor is a whole different beast – no two nodes know the other node. Random sequences of relays with multiple layers of encryption ensure that nobody on the network knows about the whole connection.
In today’s internet, Tor is our champion of privacy, but what it gives in anonymity, it takes away in speed. In the tunnel of encryption, we also encounter websites with an “onion” domain name. Some of these websites offer illegal services and content – the websites that we do not recommend visiting but that serve as a prime example of the platform’s anonymity.
Understanding the importance of staying anonymous online will help you protect your activities, avoid hackers, and hide your IP address from third parties. Tor browser is our free and main privacy tool. Give it a try if you are interested in internet anonymity.
