Anonymizing is, quite simply, to make an entity anonymous.
In the context of the Internet, however, this works with the help of anonymizers or anonymizer sites. These protect the user’s personal information. The visited website will be unable to access the user’s IP address.
In addition to this, no one can access information on the sites the user has visited.
Anonymizers work by encrypting data from the user’s computer, so that it becomes meaningless to the Internet service providers or to anyone who might try to access it.
Single point anonymizers pass the user’s data through a website before sending this to the
target website, and then pass back information from this website back to the user.
On the other hand, network anonymizers send data from the user to a network of computers before it is sent to the website. Since the information passes through several computers, it becomes more difficult for anyone trying to track the user’s information to establish the connection between the user and anonymizer.
Anonymizer traffic analysis can help break down the efforts of anonymizers by detecting patterns in the sending of data and the response time between the user’s computer and the anonymizer. As such, networked anonymizers are often considered more secure than single point anonymizers.
Anonymizers can reduce the risks presented by traffic analysis by mixing in other unrelated website requests in order to make the data more confusing. Analysis of information may also be more difficult if there are too many users surfing at the same time. Delays in response time to users can also make the detection of patterns trickier.