TOR, proxy servers

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Do you use them? Do you think they protect your privacy, or are your browsing history, purchases, contacts, etc., just being tracked by an entity that is even less accountable than Apple/Google/Yahoo/Amazon/Facebook/Twitter, etc?

Does TOR slow things down much?

I'm seriously thinking of dumping all my cookies and just logging in manually everywhere I go. I'm sick to death of thinking of eating an ice cream sundae, and having ice cream sundae ads following me all over the internet.

Any thoughts/advice on this would be interesting/appreciated.

Coming soon: Watch out for facial recognition technology that will target ads for you EVERYWHERE you go!

[drogulus]

    I use Ultrasurf for proxy servers, but only for (Arrgghh!) special projects. The rest of the time I surf normally with DoNotTrackMe and AdBlock Plus.

[mc ukrneal]

With every passing year, I get more and more paranoid with this type of stuff. I use a proxy some of the time now. Oddly, it doesn't always work. Well, it does work, in the sense that the IP is fooled when I use the internet. However, unexpectedly, there seem to be some programs (I think all Microsoft) that are sometimes able to see through them (and know my actual IP). I have this suspicion that Microsoft may have done something in order to prevent unauthorized programs being added or some such thing, but I they are all suppositions at this point. Perhaps someone here will know more. FYI - I haven't noticed that it slows things down much.

But defense is important - changing passwords regularly, trying not to key in really important info (like SSN for example) and limiting the amount of info that is available about you on the internet are porbably more important.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I wonder how much your isp knows about you? Even if you use a proxy?

[Holden]

I use Witopia. It works very well as all those ads that mirror your surfing habits don't appear.

I also believe that once you wander off into proxy server land it is not easy for your ISP to know where you've been. However, for those wanting to do a Assange or a Snowden, the powers that be can still find out where you went and what you did. It's very hard to completely wipe all traces.