The Ultimate Online Privacy Guide
Yep, you guessed it! This is it! The ultimate online Privacy guide. By following this guide you will be as close to totally anonymous as you can online. Just remember that although there are fantastic programs, dedicated teams, and this fool-proof guide to help you, privacy most of all requires common sense.
PRIVACY WARNING!!!
When installing these programs, make sure that you always select "Advanced Installation Options" where possible. This applies to all programs you download from this point on. Doing this will allow you to ALWAYS uncheck options like "Add X Toolbar", (where x is the name of the toolbar). Freeware programs often come with these, but not all of them respect your privacy, and some even behave as Spyware, tracking your browsing and slowing it down. I warn you about add-on programs or settings when I know about them, so please read the entire step before downloading.
STEP 1: FIREFOX
Download Mozilla Firefox from the above link. Then go to this guide and configure your browser as described. This is the first and most important step. If you do not do this, the other steps will be close to pointless.
STEP 2: REMOVING SPIES
Spyware and Adware is a simple way of tracking people's browsing behaviour. To avoid being compromised by this, you should, get rid of ALL signs of Spware. If you already have a dedicated Spyware Removal tool, I suggest you open that and run a scan. If not, I would suggest you download the Yahoo Anti-spy, which is linked to above. Run a scan, and delete everything it comes up with. Most likely you will need to delete a lot of tracking cookies.
Next, go download CCleaner from the link above. This program should erase all browsing history on your computer, but first we have to change some settings:
Open it up, go to "Options" from the left-hand menu, then click "settings", then check the box that says "Secure file Deletion". Next select the highest number of overwrites you can from the drop-down, preferably, 35 (Gutmann).
Now, select the cleaner tab on the left, and run the cleaner. This should delete ALL Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, and history from all your browsers in such a way that they can never be recovered.
When downloading these two programs, you will have to uncheck
"Set Yahoo! As my default search engine" from Yahoo! Anti-spy, and
"Add the Yahoo toolbar to my Browser" from CCleaner.
STEP 3: HIDING YOUR IDENTITY
One way to hide your online identity is to use a separate server between you and the destination server so that your Identity will never be revealed to the destination. The Ultimate way of hiding your identity is to use several of these servers (called nodes) located around the world that encrypt all data travelling between each other. To keep this guide from getting too long, I will just say that there is no way another person can find your real location and IP address while using this the correct way. If you want a more detailed description, go here: To start using it, follow this link: Tor
Select the operating system you are using, and download the latest stable release. The package you download should be called "Vidalia Bundle..." run the installation program, and let it install everything. You should however click the "+" sign for Vidalia and Privoxy and make sure they don't run at startup. You don't really want this, as you won't be using Tor THAT much.
To use Tor, you should open up Vidalia and Privoxy via the Start Menu. You can close the Privoxy window immediately when it opens. When the onion in the lower-right corner of the screen goes green, open up Firefox, and find the Torbutton. It should be located in the lower-right part of your browser. Click this to toggle Tor on and off.
If you start using Tor, you might notice that things are VERY slow. This is reality, and you can't really make it faster. But, what I do encourage you to do is to set up your Tor as a relay. The more people who do that, the faster Tor will be. To set it up as a relay, click on the green onion at the bottom of your screen. This will bring up a window. Click "set up relaying", and then select "relay traffic for the Tor Network". It is not necessary to name your relay anything and you do not need to provide a contact address. You may do so only if you want to.
STEP 4: COOKIES AND LSO
As you probably realize by now, you will not be using Tor do to your normal internet surfing. That would make it a painstaking process that would take away all the joy of the internet. However, if there are some websites that you want to hide your IP from, then you simply start Vidalia and Privoxy and click the Torbutton. However, there is more to it than that. If you want to be TRULY anonymous, close Firefox, and run CCleaner BEFORE you do turn Tor on. This is because cookies can track you even though your IP is hidden. Also, you should clean out your Flash cookies by going to the Better Privacy add-on we installed in step one, and selecting "Remove all LSOs".
UPDATE: CLEAR ALL INDEX.DAT FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER!!!
One thing that was left out at the time of writing is the importance of index.dat files. Go to the Second Part of the Clean-up Article to find out how to clear them.
That's it! If you follow all these steps, then there shouldn't be a person in the entire world that can track you. You will become an online shadow that nobody knows who is.
You might also want to check out these tips to make sure you are not compromising your identity while searching.