how to change my ip address??

wolfman

A site can get hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of requests a day. One ip in that log won't mean much, especially if your on a dynamic ip. I can understand your point, but it's more effort than it's worth.

Often a case of the above. Gmail is a good example, ok so it's not completely private, but it's convenient. You have to weigh up one against the other, without hampering your internet experience.

I'd look into other ways of securing your privacy.

You read Orwell per chance?

electron_3

wolfman wrote:

You read Orwell per chance?

I cant stand that little green duck

zappahey

MercilessKiller wrote:

Political: Thing this is a little deep for the average joe on this forum don't you?

Being more than a little condescending here, are you not?

My interest in privacy comes from my reluctance to allow the likes of mediaplex and all of the other tracking companies from building up a picture of my browsing and online purchasing habits. I don't actually have anything to hide, I just don't like it and that's my prerogative. I similarly don't have loyalty cards.

Having said that, I don't do it by anonymous proxies, I just edit my hosts file so that they never see a packet from me, but, if I had to anonymise, I would.

MercilessKiller

.... why are you so against companies see you browsing? Yes they want you to buy stuff, but they want you to buy stuff you'd be interested in..

think about it.. a company may see your interested in a certain product line, and produce you an offer for a very good product which you like, but you would never see if they didnt see you browsing?

And you DONT get junk from browsing sites do you? or popups? Because your email address isnt included etc etc

Zappahey, my personal opinion of that is being too paranoid matey.... you can surf without editing your host files, and not hear from a company again that you order from once if u change ur email.

zappahey

Why would I want to keep changing my email address? Is preventing the data capture in the first place any less valid than changing email addresses to avoid the outcome of that data capture?

You seem to be under the illusion that your method of avoiding junk marketing and tracking is more valid than mine, when we're achieving the same end result but mine involves little ongoing effort.

I don't really feel that I'm missing out by not being the target of focussed marketing, I prefer to think for myself. You may have different needs.

BTW, casting around insults about paranoia does not help your argument.

wolfman

zappahey wrote:

I don't really feel that I'm missing out by not being the target of focussed marketing, I prefer to think for myself. You may have different needs.

I don't know if it's purely about thinking for yourself. And anyway such things won't be done via ip address, it'll be browser cookie/session based. Amazon is a classic example. Their suggestions work very well (for me), it just helps provide a better and more accurate service.

As far as being anonymous is concerned, first switch away from IE, it passes across a lot more info that Opera for example. Have a couple of email addresses, one for personal stuff, another (without your name in) for signing up to forums, sites etc... Then just make sure you are secure. On the internet there is no such thing as anonymous browsing, everything is logged. Personally I'd rather use my ISP than go through a proxy. And can you trust certain proxy's (public) anyway?

For most companies an ip is meaningless. It's too flexible, even by region you can't always be accurate and very few people have static ip's. If you do there's not much they can do with just an ip.

zappahey

wolfman wrote:

I don't know if it's purely about thinking for yourself. And anyway such things won't be done via ip address, it'll be browser cookie/session based. Amazon is a classic example. Their suggestions work very well (for me), it just helps provide a better and more accurate service.

I don't have a problem with things like Amazon cookies, since you have an account with them anyway. It's things like adsense and mediaplex, that concern me more. The easy way is to block 3rd party cookies but my host file prevents any traffic to these services so, apart from the privacy thing, I also have faster browsing, pretty much free of ads from these providers.

wolfman

Oh, yeah. I can see what you mean from that perspective.

There are plenty of apps out there that can block such things. Peer Guardian is one I think. Also local Proxy's such as Proxomitron are very good. I prefer it to AdBlock (Firefox extension).

Lob_Rockster

I'd recommend using your ISP proxy. Why? Because you have an implied trust with them. If someone gets hacked-off with you, they DDoS the ISP and not your IP

If you find a free anonymous proxy which masks x_forwarded headers then cool - but who's managing them and who's collecting information from the logs?

Aggressive cookie management and blocking is more something for your privacy and security. Use Yahoo! groups, for example - then Yahoo! collects information as to where you come and go unless you know this and opt-out.

I don't accept certain cookies, shred my history (cache too) on exit and if I want to really "protect" myself, I use VMWare virtual machines and reset them afterwards.

Beyond that, I use throwaway email addresses, certain "public" passwords for forum logins (but different usernames ) and use hardened passwords for sites where I shop.

I like my privacy and it seems to be sticking with me

gunneradt

MercilessKiller wrote:

once again if ISPS block sites.. its blocked for a legal reason. Getting round this will be breaking terms/illegal.

As for failing to load, then that'll be an ISP issue.. but its VERY rarely that this would ever happend (never a working site failed to load for me due to ISP issue)

again, not true

Ive had many sites fail to work that miraculously appear using a proxy.