Protecting Your Privacy
Now you’ve seen how much information a web server can record about its visitors you might be feeling a little uneasy. Let’s turn the tables and discuss how you can control the information that your browser gives to the servers to which it connects.
There are many reasons why you might want not want a server to know anything about you. Seeing as you are reading this book, you might be investigating a dodgy web site and be concerned that the bad guys could identify you. You might be visiting sites that your government views as subversive and be worried about surveillance. Or you might be doing something illegal and not want to get caught.
The technology of the Internet, through its speed, ubiquity, and complete disdain for traditional national boundaries, has raised many complex issues involving civil liberties, censorship, law enforcement, and property laws. The technologies to protect or disguise your identity that are described here are at the heart of several of these debates. I encourage you to think about their ethical and political implications. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (http://www.eff.org) is a vigorous champion of freedom on the Internet, and their site is an excellent resource.
If you want to disguise or hide your identity, then you have several choices, ranging from simple browser settings to sophisticated encryption and networking software.
Disguising Your Browser
The easiest approach is to modify the User-Agent string that your browser ...
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