Marketers just love to gather information about who is surfing the web and why. They’re not above tracking a user’s web history to learn about their interests and buying habits, but they can only do it if you let them.

If you’d like to fight back you can learn to surf anonymously. It’s easy and fun! From Computerworld:

Whenever you surf the Web, you leave yourself open to being snooped upon by Web sites. They can track your online travels, know what operating system and browser you’re running, find out your machine name, uncover the last sites you’ve visited, examine your history list, delve into your cache, examine your IP address and use that to learn basic information about you such as your geographic location and more. To a great extent, your Internet life is an open book when you visit.

Oh no! What should you do? First, download Firefox. This will make the process easier. Then, you can download free software to hide your identity on the internet. Finally, install the Torbutton for Firefox to seal the deal.

For more information about how and why this works, check out the Computerworld article. To find out what people can tell about you just by visiting their site, check out BrowserSpy. —MEGHANN MARCO

How to surf anonymously without a trace [Computerworld via Hackzine]

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