Anonymous communication Over The Internet

In the modern economic world purchasing products from online stores is rapidly increasing. On the other hand cyber criminals who steal personal information and tracking online activities are also increasing. Hence people need to be more careful when exposing or giving out any personal information about them. Therefore a reliable anonymous communication system on internet is very crucial.

Anonymous communication means communicating without revealing their identity to each other or to an outside observer. Here, the communication maybe carried out over the general telephone network or the Mobile Phone network or the Internet. Many researchers have proposed solutions for achieving anonymous communication over these types of communication methods. But in this review I’m considering only about anonymous communication on Internet.

In the context of anonymous communication we first need to understand what is meant by “Anonymity” and “Unobservability”. As discussed in [Pftzmann and Waidner 1987], the anonymity is “the state of not being identifiable within a set of subjects”. There are three anonymity levels,

Anonymous Communication Systems

Follwing Systems can be used to communicate via the Internet Anonymously.

1. Web proxies
2. Mix-nets
3. Onion Routing
4. Tor Network
5. Crowds