Different people want secure surfing for different reasons. Some are behind corporate and other firewalls and find it difficult to connect to even web-based email services, etc. Others are people who just don't like the idea of people knowing where they go, what they do and being able to track movements on the world wide web. These people want privacy. Some are in countries and situations that attempt to block content that is deemed by someone else to be censored or unauthorized. Some are in delusion. And some are people just up to no good...

Depending on what your need or purpose, you will need to recognize certain basic principles involved in internet transactions. There are many people who have greater understanding of these things than we do, however, there are some basic principles that are involved in web transactions that should be considered when starting out on a secure surfing quest.

The basic internet "currency" is your IP Address. There are many things you can do on many different levels to secure privacy but every internet connection from email to web browsing to downloading files takes place through an IP address (of one kind or another). In some cases this will be the most important issue for you to solve. In other cases this will be inconsequential to you. Some services will block referring URL's, and this may be all you desire. Others will block pop-ups (one of the most obnoxious wonders of the internet). Many services will give you a "proxy" IP address but if you do not shut-off javascripts, it is very likely you can be tracked anyway.

If you have "spyware" on your computer, you are going to be tracked and added to marketing and other databases even if they do not know exactly who you are, personally, they will know that "a computer user" who went here also went there and possibly more.

If you have no handle on the cookies set on your computer, you could likely suffer the same fate. It should be pointed out that many of the things in question here can also be very benign. Cookies can be very useful and even enhance security in some situations and at other times can be at odds with your intentions of privacy. Javascript, being a client-side language (that is, a language installed on your own computer), can make wonderful websites and also can be a security vulnerability in that anyone can put any code in their web pages they want and it can initiate processes on your local computer, sometimes without your knowing it.

If you do not have a good virus protection system, you are always vulnerable to security intrusions. Firewalls are great and important to keep others from connecting to your computer. If you have a high-speed connection and no firewall you are at risk.

You have to use some good common sense about all of these issues regarding security. This website uses a javascript tracking code that tells us what pages are visited (on our site only!) so that we can better understand what is being used, and what is not. It does *NOT* tell us who you are. It does not compromise your security. It does not "add a cookie" to your computer. But it is there and you can see it at the bottom of the page if you view the pages source code. This is what we would consider a benign form of tracking. A malignant form of tracking is, to us, where you are tracked via a cookie or some other means between websites. The information aggregated and shared by marketers, etc. That, at least, is our feeling. Most sites will at least gather an IP Address somewhere on some server log.

In that vein, we offer our Secure Surfing page as a resource of different tools. We hope we have helped a little in your quest for secure surfing. Enjoy the Web!