The companies that allow a free antivirus scan include Bit Defender and Panda Security. Both of these companies have a good reputation in the field of creating computer security products. The reason they allow you to carry out a free scan is for you to get a feel for how simple their products are to use. The hope is that you then go on to buy the full product.

However, don’t rely on this free scan for your antivirus protection. Although it is better then doing nothing, carrying out a scan is only the first step in protecting your PC. You really want a full working product available to you as soon as any virus is encountered on your machine. It is also better to have a product that provides ‘real-time scanning’. With this feature, viruses are detected as soon as they try to get on your computer. This is better than waiting to find them on your next manual virus scan.

The second option is to use a totally free antivirus product. These can be downloaded for no charge and will both scan your computer and remove any problems that are found. AVG Antivirus is a program that falls into this category. It also provides some real time scanning ability.

Protecting your PC is a serious business. Using software that will provide a free antivirus scan is a great first step in protecting yourself. You will also need to decide what software to use to remove viruses and provide real time protection for your computer.

Regular scanning for viruses is a necessary part of having any computer with Internet access. But some well-known pieces of software consume a large amount of your system resources to carry this out. In practice what this means is that your whole computer will slow down. Instead of flying through computations and opening programs quickly, it will feel like it’s taking ages.

Some of the best-known antivirus software are notorious for this. One such example is Norton Antivirus and in particular the Internet security suite. That is not to say that the software is bad or doesn’t do its job. Indeed, it works well. But it should be working quietly in the background, not affecting your whole system.

So how can you make sure that you get an efficient piece of antivirus software? Make use of any shareware or 30 day trials that you can download from the Internet and use before parting with any cash. This will give you a good feel for how the software will perform. This is preferable to buying the product from a shop, as often they will not accept a return once the packaging is open.

You can also look at the system requirements stated on the product. In my experience manufacturers often underestimate the system requirements. However if you are comparing 2 products and one needs 16MB of RAM and the other 256MB of RAM, you can guess which is going to suck up more of your resources.

You should also have a read of antivirus comparisons and reviews on the Internet and in the popular computing press.

Examples of products that have low resource requirements include AVG Antivirus from AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft). This is available in a free version. NOD32 from Eset is another product that is famous for working very fast in the background and has a first class record of virus detection.

By considering the resource requirements, your computer will be protected but will still perform all its tasks quickly.

Hackers take advantage of your computer vulnerabilities to install small programs on your computer which record and relay your keyboard input. Then your information and passwords are used to hack into your bank accounts, credit cards and other financial institutions and cause you immense loss. In a similar manner, your lack of anonymous surfing leads to your professional data being stolen by hackers.

Advertisers find easy access to your computer and follow your internet activity to annoy you with popups or banner ads or both, even when you are not online. You also get bombarded with junk emails advertising products making your mailbox a spammers’ heaven. Without anonymous surfing, you will find advertisers accompanying you on the web at all time.

Hijackers use tracker cookies planted into your computer to stop you from anonymously surfing. These cookies follow your surfing patterns and then hijack your searches, with or without your knowledge. Hijackers don’t take your consent to install cookies and you end up on websites of hijackers’ choice. Do anonymous surfing to prevent hijackings.

Con Artists send you mails disguised as those from your bank and other financial companies. Some conmen even send mails announcing you as winners and asking for your financial details. Once you give financial details you find yourself conned out of your savings. You need to practice anonymous surfing to avoid such traps.

Mischief makers abound on the internet looking for browsers without anonymous surfing habits. They use unauthorized downloads to infect your computer with viruses, worms, trojans, spyware and other harmful programs. This can lead to loss of control over your own computer. You need to keep your computer safe from mischief makers and do only anonymous surfing.

Family and Work colleagues can easily trace your internet activity from the tracks you leave on your computer. The only way to prevent this is to do anonymous surfing.

With so many disrupters and scammers, not to mention people you know, following your internet browsing you can’t have any internet privacy. Safeguard your web privacy by using anonymous surfing software. Anonymous surfing software will ensure that not only is your browsing private, your data and information is also safe and secure.

1. Backup your files and store them in a safe place away from your computer

2. Frequently patch and update your operating system, anti-virus, web browser and internet protection in order to prevent hackers from taking advantage of loopholes in software. You can update your windows operating system quickly at www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com by using the update wizard. Microsoft Office updates can also be found at www.officeupdate.microsoft.com

3. Install a proper firewall. With both a proper hardware and software firewall, most viruses, worms, trojans, malicious programs and adware are removed before they cause any major trouble or damage. It is important to update your firewall regularly as well.

4. Configure your browser and email settings for best security. Programs like ActiveX and Java are most commonly used by hackers to plant malicious programs into your system. Cookies can also be used to track your internet surfing in order to build an online profile of you. A good way to overcome these problems is to configure your internet browser to “high” security settings. At minimum, set your security settings to “high” for the internet and “medium” for your trusted sites zone.

5. Automatically update your antivirus software and internet security softwares. This allows you to receive the most current versions to prevent your computer security from being compromised.

6. Only run email attachments from people you know. And even then, only when you know what you are openning. Often, hackers can use a compromised email address to spam viruses or worms to infect other people. It is not enough to recognise the email address but rather you need to recognise the attachment.

7. Do not run unknown .exe programs. This is the most dangerous thing to do as they often contain trojan horse scripts waiting to infect other computers.

8. Disable hidden filename extensions. This allows you to identify and spot any unknown filenames or programs that may be running on your computer. The Windows default option hides filename extensions so you will have to disable this option.

9. Disconnect your computer from the internet and switch it off when not in use. This prevents a hacker from attacking your computer as it is not hooked up to a network.

10. Make a boot disk on a CD before your computer experiences a hostile breach of security. This allows you to recover the data and your system operations after a successful attack on your computer.

Anonymous surfing software is an application that keeps you safe while on the internet. It gives your web browsing anonymity, preventing tracking and other misuse of your presence on the internet. There are 5 advantages to using this software:

1. Privacy

Anonymous surfing software maintains your privacy. On the internet it gives you the freedom to surf freely without worry of anyone getting access to your computer and the data and information stored it. But what about your family, friends, or office? Your online activities are kept private, thereby eliminating the possibility of anyone knowing what you did online.

2. Safety

Anonymous surfing software keeps harmful programs from downloading on your computer, like key loggers which can be used to record your financial passwords, incurring financial losses for your. Similar programs can be used for your data passwords too leading to data loss and security breaches. Your financial data remains safe and protected.

3. Security

Internet is no longer a safe place. There is no way for you to know which website is downloading harmful programs in your computer. Anonymous surfing software takes care of this for you, preventing any unauthorized downloads on your computer. So you can surf without fear of spyware, adware, worms, etc. When you use anonymous surfing software, your web searches are no longer pharmed (redirected) to other websites who profit by tracking and hijacking your web surfing.

4. Encryption

Anonymous surfing software encrypts your internet connection and communication online. To do this it uses SSL technology and SSH tunneling. The data sent out from your computer and received to your computer is encrypted, making it safe from hackers and other internet watchers having harmful intent.

5. Anonymity

Anonymous surfing software will obtain anonymity for you on the internet. To do this, it utilizes anonymous proxy surfing methods which channel your surfing through other computers (servers). The logic is simple your web browser connects to a proxy server which in turn connects to the internet, masking your presence and your computer’s identity. This is useful for both personal and business reasons.

1. Security Updates

Always ensure that all critical security updates are installed on your computer. These are released by Microsoft each month and fix known security issues that have been discovered. In case of forgetfulness set the updates to automatically install by going to start >control panel>automatic updates.

2. Passwords

Always use a password; the longer the better. Make sure it is not something that someone could easily guess i.e. a child’s name. Use a mixture of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols. Do not write the password down, or let others know what it is.

3. Administrator Account

DO NOT use an account with administrator privileges for everyday use, as this could allow viruses and spyware the ability to self install on your PC. Always create a limited account for daily use. If you need to install anything you can login as administrator or use Run As (shift and right click the file) to install without logging off. It is also advisable to delete the ‘Guest’ account.

To create a limited account:

Start>Settings>Control Panel>User Accounts

Select Create a new account, give it a name, and select Limited as the account type.

4. Firewall

Microsoft Windows XP Service pack 2 provides you with a free personal firewall. Make sure that it is activated by going to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Windows Firewall.

Alternatively you can download ZoneAlarm, a free personal firewall for individual use.

If you have a broadband router with built in firewall, ensure that it is active. Details can be found in the manual supplied with your router. Only install one software, and one hardware firewall, or you may not be able to connect to the internet.

5.0 Antivirus software

To protect yourself from viruses, you will need to install an up-to-date anti-virus software package. There are many commercial packages available, offering complete protection, including firewall and spyware protection, and spam filtering for your email. These packages provided by suppliers such as Mcafee and Symantec will normally have a yearly subscription charge and provide updates for your software as new threats appear. For those on a tight budget there are a many free antivirus products available, such as Antivir Avast! and AVG.

As mentioned, updates are released for these packages frequently, so you will need to check the settings of your installed antivirus software to ensure that it is scheduled to automatically install new updates. It is also advisable to set a scheduled time for the software to check your files automatically.

6. Anti-spyware & Malware

Spyware and Malware are programs that once installed onto your PC will collect personal information, install other programs and take over your web browser. They will redirect you to other malicious web sites, pop up offensive or irritating advertisements, and also slow down your computer.

There are many anti-spyware packages available, including many that are free. Free anti-spyware packages include Microsoft Defender, though the most popular is Ad-aware, and Search & Destroy. Remember to install any updates to ensure full protection from the latest threats.

7. Update your Web Browser

Install Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft or Firefox from Mozilla.The latest browsers will provide increased security against phishing (Spoof websites that steal account details). The recent updates will also give you enhancements, such as tabbed browsing, live web feeds (RSS) and popup blocking.

8. Shared Files and Folders.

Check that your important files and folders are not shared. Click on ‘My Computer’, right click your ‘C: Drive’ and select ‘Properties’. Select the ‘Sharing Tab’ and select ‘Do not share this folder’. Click ‘OK’. If you need to share a folder or file with someone, remember to remove the share later.

9. Backing Up Your Files.

It is always better to prepare for the worst case scenario. A virus could infect your computer, or a component such as the hard disk may fail. Regularly backing up a recent copy of your important files, and storing them elsewhere could save you hours of work in an emergency. Start getting into the habit of routinely saving all your important files to either a CD, USB flash or external drive. Alternatively back up those files to an online data storage website. Take a look at www.humyo.com. It is free to use, has unlimited storage space, and is flexible enough to allow you to share files with friends, publish information, and access your data on a mobile phone.

10. User Awareness

The final and most important security tip is user awareness. All the extra protection installed will be useless if you install software that has Malware built in. Many file sharing software packages are guilty of this.

Do not open email attachments from someone you do not know, or with a suspicious subject. If you need to view them, save the attachment first and check it with your virus software. Do not pass on chain e-mails as these are considered spam.

If you have children, make sure that you can see which sites they visit, and make sure they are logged in with a limited account. Install content software similar to net nanny which will restrict malicious or adult web sites.

I will give you some very useful tricks and tips to remove
Spyware and Viruses for good! Follow closely:

Steps to Remove Spyware, Viruses, and Adware

1. There are many types of software available today that
claim to remove spyware off our system, but which one REALLY
does the job? What you need is software that not only will
remove spyware, but TOTALLY removes it for good and keeps it
off. After searching for the best of the best, here is THE
BEST: Panda Online Scan. Why? It does not constantly run
on your system, slowing it down and using bunches of memory!
In other words, it runs from Panda on the web, then searches
your whole system, will remove spyware and other bugs, then
gives detailed info on the bug and tells you how to keep it
off your system! Here is the address to get started:

http://www.stopspywareforfree.com/scan.html

It only installs a few plug-ins to run on your system, and
no full installation!

2. Check your system services and systray items! The
biggest mistake people make is never checking what programs
are running in the background or memory of the system. A key
step to remove spyware from your system is knowing this.
Without knowing these things, you probably have bugs running
on your system, and never know it! Why? They like to hide!
Download and install a program called HIJACK THIS. It tells
you exactly what is running and what is not running so you
know exactly what might be hiding behind closed doors! Here
is the address for this:

http://www.stopspywareforfree.com/hijackthis.html

3. Shutdown the SYSTEM RESTORE! (Windows XP)

Spyware and Viruses attach themselves to your system’s
restore files. This is an easy way for them to hide, even
after you reinstall Windows! Right click on ‘MY COMPUTER’,
then click on ‘Properties’. Look for a tab on top called
‘System Restore’, and click there. Check the box that says
‘Turn off system restore on all drives’. Click ‘APPLY’,
then ‘OK’. That’s it!

4. Use an Anonymous IP address when surfing the web!

This is a huge step in keeping bugs off your system forever!
Bugs get onto your system and retrieve info about you by
capturing your IP address. Your IP address tells everyone
who you are, where you’re located, your system info, what
kind of Windows you use, your browser, etc. An anonymous IP
hides your IP by using an Anonymous address and makes you
invisible to everyone, including Spyware and Ads! Here is an
address to a good proxy list:

http://www.stopspywareforfree.com/proxylist.html

Please follow these instructions carefully for Microsoft
Internet Explorer:

a) Scroll down on the page from the above link. On the
list, look at the numbers listed under IP:Port Host name.
Make sure the uptime on the right is at least 97 to 99 %.

b) Go to the Control Panel in Windows.

c) Open up ‘ Internet Options’.

d) Click on the ‘Connections’ tab on top.

e) Click on ‘LAN Settings’.

f) Put a check-mark where it says PROXY SERVER.

g) In the Address box, copy and paste the IP address listed
on the proxy list (for example: 148.244.150.58 - These are
the numbers shown BEFORE the ‘:’ (semi-colon).

h) Copy and paste the port number into the PORT box (for
example: ‘80′ - the number immediately after the
semi-colon).

i) Click OK, and OK again to close, and close everything.

j) Go ahead and open up your browser and try surfing the
internet to test.

Thats it! You are now surfing invisibly!

For the Firefox browser:

a) Open up the browser and go to ‘TOOLS’ then ‘OPTIONS’.

b) Go to ‘GENERAL’ on the left, then click the ‘Connection
Settings’ button below.

c) Choose ‘Manual’ proxy config from the choices.

d) Check the ‘use the same proxy’ checkbox.

e) In the ‘HTTP Proxy’ box, copy and paste the anonymous IP,
and the PORT number in the PORT box (remove the zero first).

f) Click OK, then OK again to close.

g) Now test your browser by surfing the web.

You are now invisible.

**note - if your browsing gets super slow or has a problem,
look for another IP and Port number on the list and try
again. Most of the time the proxies from Mexico work best.
Happy surfing! The free proxy list can be found here:

http://www.stopspywareforfree.com/proxylist.html

5. Download and install the new FIREFOX browser!

Please get rid of Microsoft Internet Explorer on your
system! It is like a pipe that feeds Spyware, Ads and
Viruses onto your system. There are just too many holes
there letting everything in. Mozilla is a fairly new company
that introduced a new breed of browser that blocks popups,
and tries hard to keep these bugs off your system. It has
very few or even NO holes or pipes to let the bugs in! Many
people use it for this very reason, and it has a great look,
better speed, and lets you change the theme of it! Awesome!
Here is the address:

http://www.stopspywareforfree.com/firefox.html

Well that about sums up how to remove spyware in 5 steps.
Follow them CLOSELY and you will see how great it is to surf
virus free Forever! Guaranteed!

If you start a new website and you’re so anxious to announce it to the world that you begin massive promotional effort before you finish testing to make sure my shopping cart works or that the pictures for all of my products load correctly it won’t matter how many hits you get you still will not sell anything. Most likely people will just leave. You have to begin with content first. If you have a section of your site that is still under construction do not link to it until it’s ready to go. Users do not want to see unfinished pages and a lot of search engines, website directories, and such will not look kindly at them either. If you page is not sale ready when your traffic does come your sales or advertising revenue will remain extremely low until you fix it. Keep in mind your viewers are one click of the back button away from someone else selling or promoting the same or similar item. You have to be absolutely sure you’re ready for them when they show up.

2. Paying for discount web traffic

Purchasing web traffic from a discount seller is a complete waste of money. You can search right now for a web traffic generation script with a built in proxy service that will hit any website with a predefined list of ip addresses over a 24 hour period every so many seconds. You can find hundreds of site that will sell you thousands of hits for next to nothing. I can tell you up front that none of these hits will purchase anything from you and traffic in quantities that are obtainable by purchasing it will not have much if any effect on your website’s ranking within the search world. If you have the kind of budget to send your website thousands of low cost hits everyday your marketing money is much better spent elsewhere.

3. Auto or manual surf your way to success

If you are interested in getting a few hundred non interested hits per day and wasting your own precious time this method is great. It becomes like a never ending video game after a while clicking on the right thing every 15 seconds to see the same website you saw one minute ago. Knowing that there is someone else out there happy to be getting hits on their site the same as you are on yours. I ca not say that you might not get a few interested people this way but to are you really marketing your site or just wasting your time. This is up to you to decide by my vote is wasting your time.

4. Trying to advertise to the whole Internet

If you do not know who your target customer is you will never successfully draw a stream of customers to your door. The web is filled with millions of users all looking for different things all the time. Trying to draw the masses to your new start up website without clearly defining who you want to come that is most likely to be interested in and have the ability to afford your product or service then you will get yourself no where. This is marketing 101 basics here. Define you customer in such detail that you know what he or she drinks with their breakfast in the morning, what kind of car they most likely drive, what type of neighborhood they most likely live in, how much annual income they most likely have. Marketing is about penetrating a product into a market to fill an existing need, or educating your customer about a need and then selling the solution. Advertising is an art and a science. You have to master both to be successful. Getting your website links on a whole bunch of pages does not really mean anything unless you’re targeted customer is the one viewing those pages.

5. Thinking that you can build an empire for free

There are many methods of website promotion that are free and do work. I’m just not that confident that any of them are very effective without some level of financial backing. Article Marketing, Directory Submission, Link Placement, E-mail Marketing can all be done for free through many websites. All of them can work if done properly and consistently. You can get placement on better article sites or wider distribution through distribution services than through any single site. Manually submitting articles to hundreds of sites does not make any sense when you consider how much your time is worth. The same logic applies to the other free methods mentioned. You can do them all for free but are you getting the same results as if you paid for them to be done better, more consistently, and more targeted at your key audience. Sometimes the difference between a small amount of success and making your dreams come true can be a modest financial commitment over a short period of time. You have to sacrifice something to achieve success no one will hand it to you.

Remember who your ideal customer is at all times with any type of marketing you do. Figure out what your product or service niche is and what benefits that will have to your ideal customer. Target that customer as specifically as possible. Make sure you site completely functional when your customer arrives. Creating a high traffic website is worth it but it will only happen if you’re marketing methods are targeted right, consistent, and have a method of measuring their success or failure.

To understand this exploit, you must first understand about Google’s Duplicate Content filter. It’s simply described thus: Google doesn’t want you to search for “blue widget” and have the top 10 search terms returned copies of the same article on how great blue widgets are. They want to give you ONE copy of the Great Blue Widget article, and 9 other different results, just on the off chance that you’ve already read that article and the other results are actually what you wanted.

To handle this, every time Google spiders and indexes a page, it checks it to see if it’s already got a page that is predominantly the same, a duplicate page if you will. Exactly how Google works this out, nobody knows exactly, but it is going to be a combination of some or all of: page text length, page title, headings, keyword densities, checking exactly copy sentence fragments etc. As a result of this duplicate content filter, a whole industry has grown up around trying to get round the filter, just search for “spin article”.

Getting back to the story here, Google indexes a page and lets say it fails it’s duplicate content check, what does Google do? These days, it dumps that duplicate page in Google’s Supplemental Index. What, you didn’t know that Google have 2 indexes? Well they do: the main one, and supplemental one. 2 things are important here: Google will always return results from their Main index if they can; and they will only go to the Supplemental index if they don’t get enough joy from their main index. What this means is that if your page is in the supplemental index, it’s almost certain that you will never show up in the Search Engine Ranking Pages, unless there is next to no competition for the phrase that was searched for.

This all seems pretty reasonable to me, so what’s the problem? Well there’s another little step I haven’t mentioned yet. What happens if someone copies your page, let’s say your homepage of your business website, and when Google indexes that copy, it correctly determines that it’s a duplicate. Now Google knows about 2 pages that it knows are duplicates, it has to decide which to dump in the supplemental index, and which to keep in the main one. That’s pretty obvious right? But how does Google know which is the original and which is the copy? They don’t. Sure they have some clever algorithms to work it out, but even if they are 99% accurate, that leaves a lot of problems for that 1% of times they can get it wrong!

And this is the heart of the exploit, if someone copies your websites homepage say, and manages to convince Google that *their* page is the original, your homepage will get tossed into the supplemental index, never to see the light of day in the Search Engine Ranking Pages again. In case I’m not being clear enough, that’s bad! But wait, it gets worse:

It’s fair to say that in the case of a person physically copying your page and hosting it, you can often get them to take it down through the use of copyright lawyers, and cease and desist letters to ISP’s and the like, with a quick “Reinclusion Request” to Google. But recently there’s a new threat that’s a whole lot harder to stop: the use of publicly accessible Proxy websites. (If you don’t know what a Proxy is, it’s basically a way of making the web run faster by caching content more local to your internet destination. In principle they are generally a good thing.)

There are many such web proxies out there, and I won’t list any here, however I will describe the process: they send out spiders (much like Google’s) and they spider your page, take your content, then they host a copy of your website on their proxy site, nominally so that when their users request your page, they can serve up their local copy quickly rather than having to retrieve if off your server. The big issue is that Google can sometimes decide that the proxy copy of your web page is the original, and yours is not.

Worse again, there’s some evidence that people are deliberately and maliciously using proxy servers to cache copies of web pages, then using normal (white and black hat) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to make those proxy pages rank in the search engine, increasing the likelihood that your legitimate page will be the one dumped by the search engines’ duplicate content filters. Danger Will Robinson!

Even worse still, some of the proxy spiders actively spoof their origins so that you don’t realise that it’s a spider from a proxy, as they pretend to be a Googlebot for example, or from Yahoo. This is why the major search engines actively publish guidelines on how to identify and validate their own spiders.

Now for the big question, how can you defend against this? There are several possible solutions, depending on you web hosting technology and technical competence:

Option 1 - If you are running Apache and PHP on your server, you can set the webhost up to check for search engine spiders that purport to be from the main search engines, and using php and the .htaccess file, you can block proxies from other sources. However this only works for proxies that are playing by the rules and identifying themselves correctly.

Option 2 - If you are using MS Windows and IIS on your server, or if you are on a shared hosting solution that doesn’t give you the ability to do anything clever, it’s an awful lot harder and you should take the advice of a professional on how to defend yourself from this kind of attack.

Option 3 - This is current the best solution available, and applies if you are running a PHP or ASP based website: you set ALL pages robot meta tags to noindex and nofollow, then you implement a PHP or ASP script on each page that checks for valid spiders from the major search engines, and if so, resets the robot meta tags to index and follow. The important distinction here is that it’s easier to validate a real spider, and to discount a spider that’s trying to spoof you, because the major search engines publish processes and procedures to do this, including IP lookups and the like.

So, stay aware, stay knowledgeable, and stay protected. And if you see that you’ve suddenly been dumped from the Search Engine Rankings Pages, now you might know why, how and what to do about it.

How do people get this basic information about you?

When you visit another web site, information about you can be retrieved. Basically, information is intercepted and used by others to track your Internet activities.

How do you stop this from happening?

First of all, it is possible to serf the web anonymously and thereby stop leaving a trail for others to find. Note that this is not fool-proof, but it makes it much harder for people to know who you are. There are products called anonymous proxy servers that help protect you. The anonymous proxy server replaces your Internet address for its own. This has the effect of hiding your IP address and making it much harder for people to track you.

How do I get an anonymous proxy server?

There are many vendors who sell anonymous proxy servers. There are also free proxy servers available to you. Two such products are ShadowSurf and Guardster. Guardster offers various services for anonymous and secure access to the web, some paid as well as a free service. ShadowSurf ShadowSurf provides anonymous surfing at their site for free. Go to it and you will find a box to enter a URL that you want no one to track. There are many others, but here are two that are frequently used.

Another interesting product, given the recent news about the Google search engine filtering its findings for the Chinese government, is Anonymizer . This company, among others, recently (Feb 1st, 2006) pressed that it “is developing a new anti-censorship solution that will enable Chinese citizens to safely access the entire Internet filter-free”
Does an anonymous proxy server make you 100% safe?

No. Still, you are much better off if you use such technology.

What other things should I be concerned about when trying to keep my private information private?

Three other items come to mind when trying to keep your information private. First, you can use an encrypted connection to hide your surfing. This article does not go into detail on this, but search the web and you will find a lot of information on this. Secondly, delete cookies after each session. Third, you can configure your browser to remove JavaScript, Java, and active content. This actually leads to limitations, so you need to think about the cost/benefit of this course of action.