The Drawbacks of Anonymous Surfing

BlueCup writes to tell us that one reporter decided to give anonymous web surfing a shot, and found it to be much more trouble than it was worth. Many users take advantage of Tor and other anonymous web browsing tools, but is the amount of hassle worth the effort it takes to remain anonymous?

Comments

Not truly anonymous surfing

[smooth wombat]

After reading the article and digestig what the reporter wrote, he wasn't being very anonymous even with his efforts. Sure, he deleted his cookies when he was done (I do too) but he never removed all his cache files which could be used to track you. Yes, this will increase the time it takes for a page to load but since apparently everyone but me uses a high-speed connection, waiting that extra half second doesn't seem to be that much of a hassle.

Also, since he had to relogin when he went to Amazon or other sites, he was giving up his anonymity because now the site can track when he last visited, what he went to and so forth.

As far as sites balking that he didn't have a cookie, um, so what? That is the whole point of trying to be anonymous, right?

Had the author simply stuck with sufing around and not registering with sites he would have a better case for his article. As it stands, not so much. He needs to look up the word anonymous and see why he wasn't.