In Brief

Web Monitoring: Anonymizers vs. Anti-Anonymizers

In the struggle to provide a sure way to surf the Internet anonymously, will anyone ever win?

By Fred Hapgood

More recently, anti-anonymizers might try to restrict access to sites that subscribe to certain certificate authorities, or to allow connections only with a specific list of approved sites. Finally, they might try to identify proxy sites by their behaviors, as opposed to their URLs. These "anonymization management" tools are used, for instance, by companies who want to prevent their employees from using anonymizers. The Israeli security services company Aladdin is a representative vendor in this category, as is 8e6 Technologies, based in Orange, Calif. In their eyes, anyway, the whole good guy/bad guy layout has been reversed 180 degrees since those days when anonymizers were pure good.

So which tools ultimately will be more powerful--the anonymizers or the anti-anonymizers? It might not matter. The bottom line is that it is impossible to have a set of tools permitting anonymity without at the same time having a set preventing it. The Internet is like that.

Fred Hapgood is a freelance writer. Send feedback to CSOletters@cxo.com.

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