When surfing the Internet web sites you visit are able to track your IP, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or even your employer can record any address your visit and tracks of your actions (in the form of cookies, browser history, recently opened document list, temp files, etc.) are recorded on your hard drive so anyone who uses the same computer as you can easily see where you go and what you do.
This guide shows how to be anonymous when surfing and how to cover the tracks of your activities.
1. Download, install and run GhostSurf. This program provides an anonymous Internet connection to let surf the Web invisibly. It works with all Web browsers, and also supports instant messengers, newsgroups feeds and popular chat programs. GhostSurf also erases all Internet tracks - items such as your Web history, cache, clipboard, and cookies can be electronically shredded.
(GhostSurf Download)
2. From the start screen open the Privacy Control Center by clicking on the key icon. When you do this for the first time a message will be displayed. It tells you to configure your browser proxy. This must be done only if you use a browser different than Internet Explorer.
3. With the Privacy Level slider the Privacy tab you can choose a privacy level. When a new privacy level is chosen it applies instantly to all sites. There are four privacy levels:
- Normal - all your data will be send as normal, that is as if you were not using GhostSurf. This is useful if you are using a trusted web site that requires your personal information (like an e-mail site, bank site, etc.). Instead of using this level it's more advisable that a higher security level is used and the trusted sites which need your personal information are added to the Special Sites (explained below).
- Anonymous - at this level your personally-identifying information is removed, but the connection is made directly to the web sites you browse. That means that those web sites can see what your IP is and also that Internet Service Providers (and possibly your employers, if you are browsing from work) can see what web sites you are visiting. This security level should be used only when you visit trustworthy sites and you don't care if anyone knows you're visiting them.
- Invisible - on this level not only is your personally-identifying information removed, but all connections are routed through anonymous hubs. This way the web sites you are visiting will not see your real IP and it is far harder for someone to track which web sites you are visiting. Only a very advanced hacker or a really determined ISP will be able to find out what you were surfing. This privacy level is recommended for most users.
- Secure - this is the most secure level. As in the Invisible level data which can be used to identify you is removed, the connections are routed through anonymous servers, but also everything is encrypted, making it impossible for a hacker or even agency to see which sites you have visited. Due to the encryption the connection using this level is significantly more slower and it is recommended only when absolute security is necessary.
It's advisable to set the security level to Invisible and add the trusted web sites which require some identifying information to Special Sites. To do so follow the next step.
4. Choose the Special Sites tab. Here you'll find a list of already added trusted sites like aol.com, hotmail.com, windowsupdate.microsoft.com, etc. To add a new trusted site click on Add. In the Special Site Privileged dialog that appears enter the site address (for example trusted.site.com). You can also fine tune the privacy settings for this site by choosing if you want to block the sending of personal information to this site, if you want the communication to this site to be routed through an anonymous servers (so that the site can not track you back and no one to be able to see that you've visited this site) and if the communication with the site to be encrypted for ultimate security. When done click OK to add this site to the list.
You can also remove any site from the list (by selecting it and clicking Remove) or changing the privacy settings for given site (by selecting it and clicking Properties).
When you're done close the Privacy Control Center and the main GhostSurf window. By now on your tray bar there should be and eagle eye icon from which you can access GhostSurf at any time.
Covering your tracks
When you're browsing the Internet, viewing photos, watching movies or opening some other kind of documents on your computer, tracks of these activities are left on your hard drive - web sites history, cookies, recently opened files, different programs also keep history on their own. All this records have the purpose to make your work more convenient, but not all of these information is always needed (or event wanted).
To delete all of these tracks by hand is a cumbersome task and the chance is high that you'll forget to delete program X's history (or event know that it keeps one). Furthermore to delete a file it's not enough just to hit Del. When you delete a file from your hard-drive it is only marked as deleted, so later other files can be recorded over it. And if no file is recorded over, it's not hard to recover the file with the right program. Even if there is a file recorded over, the old one still leaves magnetic traces, so if not deleted properly it can later be recovered with the right hardware.
To aid you in properly deleting tracks from your hard disk, GhostSurf comes with a tool called TracksCleaner. It will clean for you all unwanted traces from all programs that keep such on your computer.
1. To open TracksCleaner right-click on the eagle eye icon on your tray bar, select Open GhostSurf and on the main program window click on TracksCleaner icon.
2. When TracksCleaner opens choose Wipe Now from Pages. You will see a list of items to be deleted. This list depends on the programs installed on your computer and ranges from Clipboard, through IE Downloaded Program Files to Media Player Playlist. You can select what elements you want to be cleared. When ready click on Go!.
If you want to keep some information like cookies for some sites or to keep your favourite web pages in the browser history go to View Traces page. Here you'll see the traces you left while browsing. You can go through them and Protect the ones you don't want to be deleted. The protected elements can be viewed in Protected Elements page.
Tips
1. The default method of clearing traces is to overwrite the disk data with zeros and then deleting it. This method is fast and generally secure - one will need very advanced hardware to recover the deleted data. If you need a more secure way, that will prevent even hardware recovering, you can choose one from Strength page in TracksCleaner. The strongest method is the Gutmann's algorithm.
2. If you don't want to clear your tracks every time (or are afraid that you'll forget) you can schedule TracksCleaner to make periodic "wipe-outs". Go to Scheduler page and choose time for the scheduled wipe. You can choose from "On computer start", "On all browsers closed" or a fixed time (like "Every Monday at 9 AM" for example).
3. You can view all elements that were deleted by TracksCleaner (and the time of deletion) from the History page.
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