Guidelines for proper use

anonymoX can protect your identity in the internet, but it's not a panacea!

anonymoX prevents essential options to identify you, as for example it conceals your IP address. But there are other tricks and possibilities to gather information about you while surfing the web.

To obtain the maximum of privacy and identity protection you should make yourself familiar with these tricks and possibilities. Therefore we show you crucial risks for your anonymity below and suggest how to protect yourself actively against them.

Not only it is a problem that there are possibilities that websites can figure out your original IP address, but they can recognize you too in case you visited that website before without using a proxy. In both cases the operator of the website and his partners are enabled to determine your identity and create a precise profile of your usage.

It is not feasible to use anonymoX profiles to help you with cookies, local data, addresses in tabs and other information which remain in Firefox but different Firefox profiles are.

Internet outside of Firefox

anonymoX works solely in Firefox and only for 'normal' http/https and ftp connections. If you use chats or filesharing programs for example, they wouldn't be anonymized

Cookies and other local data

Cookies are small files which can be stored on your PC by a website to identify you across different visits. This is used for example to save your basket while shopping or to automatically log you into a platform you are registered with.

However they can be used to create profiles of your usage as well. For example about your queries in search engines.

anonymoX comes with the possibility to deactivate or delete cookies. If you would like to create differentiated rules, for example to accept cookies only from a specific website, we suggest using the Firefox add-on Cookie Monster.

Besides the normal cookies LSO-objects are often used to recognize internet user as well. They can be additionally removed with the Firefox add-on BetterPrivacy.

Open tabs

If on a webpage for example a script loads a file from a server and between loading the original page and the beginning of loading a new file the proxy server respectively the identity is changed, the identites could become linked. This pertains not merely to scripts, but also for sites or parts of sites, which automatically refresh, or files which load deferring.

Code, which runs inside the browser

With planting active code inside a webpage, it is possible to find out your original IP address.

Flash and Java objects

Flash and Java objects which are implemented in a visited website, could be used to identify your original IP address. If you would like to preclude this you could deactivate these objects in your browser. You could do so very easy and differentiated for example in Firefox with the add-on NoScript.

Turning anonymoX on and off

In case you visit a webpage with anonymoX turned on and afterwards with anonymoX turned off (or vice versa), information, like cookies for example, could be cached, which are transferred with the next access of the webpage. Thus it is possible to recognize that both accesses date back to the same person, although different IP addresses (once one from anonymoX, once your original) were used.

This could be prevented by deleting your cookies before activating anonymoX and opening a new window or tab every time.

WebSockets

Connections via WebSockets are not anonymized at the moment. Unfortunately, there is current no good way to disable them in Firefox at the moment.

Personal data

If you share personal data, for example as you register with services in the internet, anonymoX can't protect you. If you have to quote an e-mail address, you can use Less Spam, Please for example.

Thus never use your actual data, if you want to remain anonymous.

Locally saved data

Your browser is saving the addresses of the websites you have visited in the so called history, by default as well. If someone gets access, he can comprehend your visited sites thus. In Firefox or Chrome you can prevent this using the private mode respectively incognito mode.

JavaScript

Contrary to the wide-spread misinformation it is not possible to reveal your identity solely with JavaScript while using anonymoX. Therefore it isn't absolutely necessary to turn off JavaScript. However JavaScript could be used for example to track the motion of your mouse and recognize you thereon or to read additional information like your screen resolution.

Other HTTP-Headers

By default every browser sends for example its version information (user-agent), which discloses information about the users PC. Aside from that, information about the requested language, encoding of content and possibly other individual information are sent.

These information are transmitted with every access and thus suits to recognize an user.

To anonymize these information in an easy way we recommend you to use add-ons for this specific problem as well.

Encryption

No additional encryption will be added. In case you visit an unencrypted website using anonymoX, these will remain unencrypted and could be read along by others. (For example someone who is inside the unencrypted WLAN or the Internet service provider, ISP).