Anonymous Web Browsing

Overview
Anonymous Web Browsing is an available feature offered in web browsers to maintain a sense of anonymity while using the web. These browsers hide information that can be used to personally identify a user.

Degree of Anonymity
Anonymous web browsing can be accomplished by using the private features, such as Google Chrome’s “Incognito”, which prevents others using the same device to see an individual’s browsing activity. Cookies and browsing history won’t be saved. However, users may be unaware that these browsers don’t offer as much privacy as they would like. Users that utilize the private browser function may still have their actions exposed to certain websites, companies and their internet service provider. A higher degree of anonymity can be accomplished by using programs that aren’t considered as standard as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari or Opera. The Tor browser, for instance, uses the onion routing method, where the private Tor network creates a multi-layered encryption, ultimately protecting the identity of the user. Users can also pay for services offered by Virtual Private Networks or VPNs which exercises encryption by obscuring the user’s computer location. Neither of these methods are foolproof though. There is no 100% guarantee that user identity remains anonymous.

Anonymous Web Browsing Purpose
Privacy from People

A good-sized chunk of information can be obtained from user browsing habits. It is understandable that users want to keep this information private from other people. In some cases, this may even help to maintain users’ self-representation, both to the world and to the users themselves. For these users who want to preserve their own view of their self-representation, by choosing to have browsers cease tracking certain behaviors, then these behaviors and preferences do not have to be a considered part of their identity. People often want to hide what would be considered culturally undesirable behaviors, such as snooping on another individual's personal information (Kang, 2013).

Understanding user preferences is critical for businesses to generate revenue. Hackers may be interested in looking into the systems of specific individuals as well. User IP addresses, data from cookies, and browser cache can be accessed by those who are motivated to obtain this information. Even personal data from hard drives and emails can be found, no matter how hard users try to preserve their privacy and anonymity.

Privacy from Companies

When users access the web for information, keywords and IP addresses can be logged. Companies like Google can use this information to over manipulate user search results, to get users to click on and make purchases from the advertisements. Exploiting users’ personal information to heavily filter out certain information in the search engine results to only show their preferences can lead to the filter bubble phenomenon, preventing the flow of new ideas. Furthermore, malicious companies may access this information to try to get users to click on a spammy ad as a revenue earning tactic. Users may also want to hide their activity that would be deemed malicious and could cause trouble for them down the road, such as torrenting files illegally.