Privacy is an unresolved issue on the web. The fact that web activity metrics can be used to target individuals makes the internet all the more alluring for advertising and a lot more annoying to users. Essentially the very basic IP address of a user can be used to extract quite a lot of information.

Enter Tor, a free networking software which allows you to use the Internet anonymously. It connects your machine to a host of random machines globally so that your web traffic is bounced off those machines, making the process of tracking the origin of the web request more convoluted. In short, the tool provides a reasonable degree of anonymity to web browsing.

An excerpt from Wired:

Wayne Richardson over at the Fsckin w/ Linux blog has put together a dead simple tutorial for setting up Tor and Privoxy to enable anonymous web browsing on Ubuntu Linux. He even includes installing the Torbutton add-on for Firefox and all together the set up takes about 30 seconds.

This anonymous web browsing is a good addition to the set of anonymous mailing services online. If you are using a fixed IP, then perhaps using this tool could also help in preventing malware attacks tied to IP addresses.

Also, the TorButton that you can download for free and install as a Firefox add-on is good for seamlessly enabling and disabling anonymous browsing. Give this great add-on a try!

One point to keep in mind though is that Tor provides only anonymity to your browsing and does not protect your online sessions per se. This means that you are as vulnerable as ever if you click on a link that leads to installation of malware on your PC. The utility only obscures the site level statistics regarding the origin of the web request.