It is not a perfect system. There are some aspects of web surfing that are limited or entirely disabled when you use a proxy server instead of accessing the internet directly. By their very nature a proxy server will deny data cookies. While this is good in that your further usage cannot be tracked through it, it will mean having to re-register at a site every time you view it. Proxy servers have to take the time to filter out some parts of the information stream. There is often also more information being passed through a proxy server than it can quickly handle so your browsing experience may be noticeably slower even on DSL or broadband connections. It is harder to make online purchases when surfing through a proxy server since most merchants will want a cookie on your machine for the purposes of keeping the details of the order available.

As an added precaution to keep your browsing habits from being tracked you should routinely clean out your “history” folders on your own computer as well as the internet “cache” files. For high speed connections there is the little known fact that when you reboot your modem it will issue your computer a new IP number. It will not protect you from a government investigation as the IP provider will still have records of what actual account the IP address is issued to but it will prevent most attempts at tracing you through your IP address.

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