Anonymizer

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An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the client computer's identifying information.

1 Purposes
2 Use of anonymizers
- 2.1 Protocol specific anonymizers
- 2.2 Protocol independent anonymizers
3 Use of multiple relays
4 See also
5 References

Purposes

There are many purposes for using anonymizers. Anonymizers help minimize risk. They can be used to expose human rights abuses without retribution, to speak about a taboo without loss of reputation, to receive information within a repressive regime, (and of course the character of the regime, always a matter of opinion The Met buys software to map suspects' digital movements)to prevent identity theft, or to protect search histories from public disclosure.

However, anonymizers can also be used by individuals wishing to avoid the consequences of engaging in criminal, disruptive, or socially unacceptable behaviour online. For example much of the child pornography distributed through the internet is accessed through anonymizers. Also, they are used to bypass web technologies that limit online content access to a certain number of minutes or quantity of data.

Use of anonymizers

Protocol specific anonymizers

Sometimes anonymizers are implemented to work only with one particular protocol. The advantage is that no extra software is needed. The operation occurs in this manner: A connection is made by the user to the anonymizer. Commands to the anonymizer are included inside a typical message. The anonymizer then makes a connection to the resource specified by the in-bound command and relays the message with the command stripped out.

An example of a protocol specific anonymizer is an anonymous remailer for e-mail. Also of note are web proxies, and bouncers for FTP and IRC.

Protocol independent anonymizers

Protocol independence can be achieved by creating a tunnel to an anonymizer. The technology to do so varies. Protocols used by anonymizer services may include SOCKS, PPTP, or OpenVPN.

In this case either the desired application must support the tunneling protocol, or a piece of software must be installed to force all connections through the tunnel. Web browsers, FTP and IRC clients often support SOCKS for example, unlike telnet.

Use of multiple relays

One example of "daisy-chained" anonymizing proxies is the "Tor network". Tor does not encrypt your traffic from end to end, rather it builds up a series of encrypted connections through the relays in the Tor network. An additional layer of encryption should be used with Tor if end-to-end encryption is required. See risks of using anonymous proxy servers.

Another example is I2P - the Anonymous Network. It works similar to Tor, yet with some crucial differences: I2P is an internal network. It is totally decentralized and does not rely on central lists servers and unlike Tor it uses no bidrectional tunnels, which makes timing attacks far more difficult, and it is end-to-end encrypted. As you never know if a given mix logs all connections or not, the only way to be really sure there is no logging is to run your own anonymizing mix node and blend your traffic with those of other users, who in turn need not trust you, as they blend their traffic with yours and other users' traffic in their own mix nodes. This is the philosophy behind i2p - each nodes routes traffic for others and blends its own traffic in, whereas one's own traffic will be relayed by other peers through so-called tunnels made-up of various other peers. The network is highly dynamic and totally decentralized. It takes care of other nodes learning about the your node existing, for without peers using your node, there would be no traffic to blend yours with. As all traffic always stay within the i2p network, a routing user's i2p will never show on public websites' logs.

Another example of multiple relays is sending an e-mail to an anonymizing remailer, which relays it to another remailer, which eventually relays it to its destination.

References

^ "How Anonymizers Work". The Living Internet. http://www.livinginternet.com/i/is_anon_work.htm. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
^ The hack of the year
^ Privacy-friendly law enforcement 2009

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