FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why do I need to use your services and surf anonymously?

Every time you visit a site, you leave a calling card that reveals where you're coming from, what kind of computer you have, and other details. Most sites keep logs of all your visits. In many cases, this logging may constitute a violation of your privacy, or you might not want to reveal all this information without your knowledge.

 

What information do I reveal when I visit a web site?

At the very least, web site operators will know the hostname and IP address of the machine you use to access their site, the type of computer and browser you are using, and the last page you were on before you came to their site. Additionally, they may be able to determine your e-mail address and real name. See what you are revealing at our visitor grabber section.

 

Can web sites get my home address and phone number?

Yes they sometimes can by stealing some more personal information from your browser with Java and Active X. It is feasible that other personal data about you could be obtained from a number of other sources. Four11 is a comprehensive directory of e-mail addresses and personal information. The world's telephone directories are available on a few CD-ROM's. A service called DejaNews keeps a history of all activity in Usenet Internet newsgroups. If you have ever posted a newsgroup message, someone could feasibly look it up years later when you access their page and use your words against you. There are many other resources and some companies even specialize in obtaining critical data for their clients about requested persons .

 

How does your service work?

Our Server acts as a middleman between you and the documents you want to retrieve. Our server will retrieve the document from xxxx.com, by stripping off all the headers or references that refer to you and therefore revealing nothing about your identity, and then send the document back to you after rewriting the document to reference all links back through us.

 

What if I am following a link from a web site? Am I still revealing nothing about myself?

Yes. You will never reveal anything about yourself whatever the conditions are.

 

Can sites get my e-mail if I don't put my e-mail address in my browser's configuration screen?

Possibly. There are several methods sites use to obtain your e-mail address. If your browser sets the HTTP header variable HTTP_FROM, then omitting your e-mail address will prevent the browser from sending HTTP_FROM in the HTTP request, making impossible for a web site to obtain you your address in that way.

However, tenacious sites might still be able to obtain your e-mail address by doing an ident and/or finger on your IP address, which is sent in the HTTP header. Whether that is successful depends on how much information your ISP reveals about you in response to finger and ident requests. Somebody puts a stop to this by hiding your machine's IP address.

 

Why do I sometimes have problems connecting to your site?

Problems using SOMEBODY may be caused by one or a combination of several problems. The Internet is a mish-mash of many network companies, and often, problems on the network will interfere and even stop network traffic. Multiple network problems between you and our server or between the our server and the site you want to view are cumulative -- that is, a half-dozen instances of very minor problems along the physical path to the site you want to read can make the site unusable. See the Internet Weather Report, a service of Clear Inc, for an up-to-date report on problems in the major network service providers in the USA.

 

Why do I get Authentication Failed error?

Both the username and password are sensitive to the case of the letters -- lower case or UPPER CASE. Make sure you enter them exactly as given to you for your account. Make sure the "Caps Lock" key on your keyboard is off. Usually the error message is self explanatory.

Note that abused accounts will be deactivated and no refund will be made. You would need to apply for a new account and hopefully this time you will have learned your lessen. We usually run checks once every weekend therefore if you plan on abusing our services note that it wil last only for a week. Also we can make our checking timings more frequent once we are convinced that account abuse is high but that is not the case now.

If you believe that we made a mistake, contact us and let us know the situation.

 

Can I anonymously access sites that require Basic Authentication (e.g. HotWired, Pathfinder)?

Yes. You'll still need to provide your own authentication information, but the site won't know what host you're coming from

 

Why are you charging this much?

In order to provide this service, we have to maintain very fast servers with Ultra SCSI-3 hard drives . We also have to allocate great amount of bandwidth to support the transactions of our clients. Therefore it is only fair that we are charging our clients this amount.

Many of our users are from countries where ISPs block internet access. The only way for them to have unrestricted internet access is to use anonymizing services like ours. But unfortunately, these ISPs block those services in the first place and they would have no way of accessing them. Besides, as a service like ours go public, it would naturally be blocked by ISPs at a later time if it is not already blocked. Therefore we have to maintain additional private addresses in case our web site is blocked by ISPs and is not accessible by our members from their locations. It is imperative that each member maintains a valid email address with us during the time of subscription. Others are advised to keep subscribe to our mailing list to avail latest news in case they cannot access our web site.

 

What is a URN (Universal Resource Name)?

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are the foundation of the World Wide Web, and are a vital Internet technology. However, they have proven to be brittle in practice. The basic problem is that URLs typically identify a particular path to a file on a particular host. There is no graceful way of changing the path or host once the URL has been assigned. Neither is there a graceful way of replicating the resource located by the URL to achieve better network utilization and/or fault tolerance. Uniform Resource Names (URNs) have been hypothesized as a adjunct to URLs that would overcome such problems. URNs and URLs are both instances of a broader class of identifiers known as Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

Our Server supports URN's. You will be able to view site that contain URN's if you are viewing them through us. Note that 99.9% of the ISP are not aware of this new convention and technology. Therefore any click on the links mentioned below will definitely return an error. To view these links, configure your browser to use with us.

For a more detailed, technical information about URN's view this page.

National Laboratories of Advanced Network Resources Web Site: urn:squid.nlanr.net

National Laboratories of Advanced Network Resources Web Site Menu: urn:menu.squid.nlanr.net

National Laboratories of Advanced Network Resources FTP Site: urn:squid-ftp.nlanr.net

National Laboratories of Advanced Network Resources FTP Menu: urn:menu.squid-ftp.nlanr.net

 

What is Enhanced DNS (Domain Name Service), new gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain)?

These sites below will give "DNS Error, host not found" messages in 98% of other ISPs. This is because these domain names are New Generic Top Level Domain names and DNS (domain name service) is not provided since they are new extensions in Internet. Our servers provide ROOT DNS service for all these new domains names (like .nic, .mall, .web, .film etc) in accordance with their registry AlterNIC. Of course support for standard domain names like .com, .net, .edu, .uk etc is there as well in accordance with InterNIC. You will need to configure your browser first.

.web Internet Domain Name Registry http://nic.web

Caribbean Tourist Guide http://www.carib.tour

Virgin Islands Shopping Mall http://www.bvi.mall

(Yes you are seeing it right. Indeed these domains are ending in .web and .mall instead of the standard ones like .com or .net or .org. Click on them and see for yourself that they are just like regular domains. There are hot debates on these issues. Visit Alternic for more details)

 

Why am I being asked a password on free trial section?

Only the domains mentioned on free trial page are allowed access without a password. Any other website would require a password. You problem may be like that Suppose you are trying to access www.cryptography.com using our service. This is a free access web site from our end. But if owners of cryptography.com put a link to an image say in http://linkexchange.com/pretty.gif , this link would require a password when loading their page since it is outside the boundary of cryptography.com. But if you did not put the password and pressed CANCEL, you would still be able to see cryptography.com without this particular image. When we are choosing the sites, we are first verifying that they do not require resources outside their domains. Unfortunately, since we don't have a control of these web sites, we do not know if they change their links or resources and we cannot do anything about this. Please inform us if you encounter to such a site and we will remove it from our list.

 

I have more questions. What do I do?

Send e-mail to someone@somebody.net .