Going Private

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

My editor said I could write about online privacy only if I promised not to rant again about how I think the whole issue is a big, stinking red herring. So I promise: I will not mention that the flap with Intel last week--whose upcoming Pentium III chips came under fire because they would automatically identify their owners to websites that asked--hardly raised my blood pressure. I like the idea that advertisers could use my chip to figure out who I am so that they could hit me with targeted ads; advertising is unavoidable, and the smarter the ad, the better. But I'm ranting again. I recognize that lots of people want more privacy, not less. So what can they do?

I no longer advocate the "turn your cookie off" solution to Web browsing. Cookies--data strings in your browser that identify you--can be used to determine when you last visited a website and what you saw there. Unfortunately, if you disable them (through your browser's preferences menu) you can't get into websites that require cookies. And if you opt for the middle ground--warn me if anyone wants my cookie--you end up going crazy since many sites request them dozens of times. Fortunately, there's Anonymizer Inc.

The San Diego-based company offers everything to protect your identity online. You can surf the Web, send e-mail and even be host on your own Web page without anyone's knowing who you are. Indeed, owner Lance Cottrell says he can't identify some of his users, because they sign up anonymously through the company's Web page and then pay with cash-stuffed envelopes. This, as you can imagine, could be a police officer's nightmare--untraceable stalkers, extorters, blackmailers, etc.; it's also a logical outgrowth of free speech. Besides, notes Cottrell, "95% of our customers actually pay with credit cards."

The service's most popular feature is anonymous Web browsing ($5 a month), which allows you to select a company server as your proxy--a middleman between you and the Web. All requests are shortstopped there, and cookies are summarily eaten. In a few weeks, the company will introduce a service that allows you to discriminate: if you do online banking in which a cookie is required, you can set up your account to automatically hand it over. Otherwise, Anonymizer cloaks you.

The company also makes it easy to send anonymous, untraceable e-mail through a program called Mixmaster. (Whistle blowers against government or corporate abuses, for instance, like this as do people who want to discuss sexual abuse.) It encrypts your mail, chunks it up and sends it out through a chain of "remailers"--computers that forward mail to other computers, making it impossible to intercept and trace back. Note, though, that you can't receive replies. By summer, Cottrell hopes to improve the service with something called a Nym (for pseudonym) Server that allows you to maintain untraceable, two-way e-mail under multiple aliases. The anonymous Web browser and Mixmaster are available for free tryouts on the company's website at www.anonymizer.com (though there's a 20-second delay on the browser to encourage people to pay for the service). Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go order some books, wine and pharmaceuticals online. And I don't care who knows it.

Learn more about online privacy at our cookie-pushing site, timedigital.com E-mail Josh at jquit@well.com