Firefox Extensions for surfing anonymously (1 Viewer)

Does anyone have any experience and/or recommendations regarding either of these FireFox extensions?

• Anonymization Toolbar
• Anonymouser

Are there other freeware products that accomplish the same thing?

These tools are OK but you will never be able to surf in absolute anonymity after all you always make a connection to your ISP despite which web site your visiting. You can certainly do things, which will make it more difficult to send private information (if that's what you worried about), namely;

Delete your history regularly
Never save your forms information
Never save your password for web sites
Clear your download history
Always set cookies to prompt you to save them (I only have about 7 cookies stored)
Clear your cache
Clear your temporary internet files
Never share any of your folders

In Firefox you can do this every time you exit (under Tools > Options > Privacy settings > settings), OK you have to remember more passwords etc. but it's better to be safe than sorry but my regular vists i.e. here are stored cookies so no biggie.

I could go on for ages about online security/ animosity so aside from the above here follows Minkeys top tips :

Use Firefox
Patch Firefox and Windows regularly
Get a decent Firewall - Outpost - it's free ! (Havent got a handy link to the free version as they have changed the website)
Get decent Anti-Virus software AVG - again free.
Secure Windows XP see my thread here

You can of course use a proxy but even with that you can still be traced if someone is really desperate to track you down.

If your worried about dodgy links I can recommend Site Advisor it adds a safety rating to all your web search results and guess what it's free

I appreciate this list, Minkey, as I have SiteAdvisor installed on my Firefox browser at home but couldn't find the link to the free install any longer to use on my work Firefox.

You should always be able to get it from Mozilla's FF addon site along with lots of other great stuff

I looked there since that was where I got it the first time for my home PC, but I couldn't find it the second time around. Maybe it was just me though.

Minkey,

Thanks for the tips and info. Kudos on the thread on securing Windows XP!

I actually always have FireFox delete my cookies/cache when I close it down.

Just last week I added SiteAdvisor before posting this thread! I also use SpoofStick.

I thought I'd add an update to this thread as there is a really good open source add on for Firefox recently released. There was a standalone version for a while but it needed you to manually configure your proxy settings which was not very user friendly but with the Firefox add on it really simple to use.

When you want to active it when browsing simply click on a button in Firefox.

You need the applications Tor, Privoxy and Vidalia a bundled version here and the help page here

and the Firefox add on from here.

One thing to be aware of:

The applications Privoxy and Vidalia are set to automatically run on setup and therefore any app using the net will be 'proxy'ed' which could effect some of them but you can turn them off by right clicking on the taskbar icons.