Anonymizer, Inc. Total Net Shield

When I tested my computer with Anonymizer TNS for security on GRC's "Shields Up," the report returned multiple port failures because all the ports were reported as being wide open as indicated by all the red squares. Green being "stealthed" and blue means "closed. I think that this is intended as a "spoof" in reverse. There is "no reverse DNS entry which is considered a good thing and your true IP address is always hidden. Law enforcement also uses this system. If there is a bad guy on the system, he will be quickly identified and eliminated to prevent harm to the rest of us using the system.

When viewing who is connected to your computer by using "Netstat," all you will see are the Anomymizer and TNS servers as all Internet traffic is routed between your ISP and the Anonymizing servers thru the 256 bit VPN tunnel, but only if you give it your full trust and you configure your firewall unlimited access to TNS. I have used it for four months and it works better than even a hardware firewall that I once used.

It will also warn you if you are on a website that excessivley uses spyware, adware, and robots to install on your computer. In a severe case, it prevents you from entering the malicious website but gives you a choice if you wish to conitnue at your own risk or if you choose to filter harmful content that installs spyware or viruses on your computer.

It just worked well in my laptop, so I purchased this software, I had a trial version 7 days for free. Fast, reliable and truly spyware killer.

Overall I think this is the best solution to get rid of spywares, adwares and other bugs whatever there is and one amazing thing is I can surf in the internet anonymously.

Asystematics and Annoymizer have the best solution since they use their own proxy servers. Others do not which means your traffic can get poached at many levels and locations the others do not have - like public proxy servers in China and others set up just to grab banking info etc.

After I purchased the product for the new computer we had a power failure and Anonymizer forgot who I was. Whenever I started it up I kept getting some you don't own this product kind of message. I had to call support for help. The status of the product is not very evident. There is a separate tab and the check boxes on that page must be reset every time one uses the product. They choices do not remain permanent. There is nothing to demonstrate that you are protected and not protected. Until I found the tab I ran unprotected many times.And at times when it starts it locks up during the initialization process and you have to do a restart. Happens much more that necessary. And to it goes off downloading updates at times. It does not ask if you want to do it do it later it just does it. And if you hit the cancel button it does not respond.And I get way too many Anonymizer unable to find proxy servers. I have to drop my net connection and kill Anonymizer and restart the connection and then Anonymizer. Again this is annoying and happens more than necessary.Overall this is the first anonymizer product I have used but I am an old computer developer and in my professional opinion this product has some growing up to do. I didn't do much research into the product but if I find a similar product and if the trial version works better than Anonymizer I will not renew my subscription.

Anonymizer Software:

1. File Shredder assumes all files are named with roman characters and can not handle international file names. Useless for multi-lingual applications.

2. Anonymous Surfing 2005 only appears to work for non-admin users, but does not work at all. Note that the claim 'no special configuration is required' is incorrect in light of this fault. There may be many people out there who are not anonymized even though they think they are. This is a problem because one should not be surfing the web with an administrative account, nor using an administrative account for everyday use.

WORKAROUND: Do not install the software - use the web-based service instead. If you are using your software visit test sites to confirm whether it is working. No error messages are displayed by this fault - it behaves as if it is working!

3. Company is hard to contact. Took a lot of e-mailing and several phone calls to finally receive an e-mail that acknowledged the bug but offered no solution. The technical support e-mail address was 'undeliverable', no receipts from the online support form or any other email address.

I wish someone had told me to go with Anonymizer, Inc. Total Net Shield when I bought my computer and I would have been spared a lot of hassle and headaches. Excellent investment!