Talk:Anonymous proxy

Expansion
There is plenty of material for expansion in the two cited references. I am busy with other pages now, so please be WP:BOLD. Dhaluza 18:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I saw something in an ad about anonymizer software and wanted to see what it was, I went to the anonymizer INC website and my internet security said that this site put my computer at risk for being hacked, and proxy avoidence, not sure what the second one is but the first one is obvious, mabey this should be mentioned. [January 13th 08 4:08pm Pacific time]

Trademark
Anonymizer is an internationally registered trademark of Anonymizer Inc. It should not be used in this generic sense any more than "Xerox" should be generic for "photocopy".

''Good luck with that. But out of curiosity, what would be your suggested alternative? '' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fhapgood (talk • contribs) 16:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

It is not so much luck as a legal issue. This is a clear violation of trademark. There are plenty of other terms including "privacy enhancing technology", "anonymity system", "anonymous proxy", "anonymous network", etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LanceCottrell (talk • contribs) 16:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think that the Anonymizer people like the fact that this article bears its name. I would propose to rename it to "Internet anonymity". There are several privacy and anonymity articles that touch on the subject. I believe that the information here, plus recent developments would make a very nice article. There should also be articles that list anonymity networks, systems and applications. 90.136.218.67 (talk) 18:35, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

how about calling it "anonymous internet browsing" or "anonymous web browsing"? I've heard those phrases used a lot in conversation. Hatfields (talk) 11:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If the law did not require the company to actively protect its trademark (or else loose it), I would love to see the article have our name at the top. As it is, we do need to actively try to stop infringing uses. I would support either of the above names for the article, and would support having a link to the article right at the top of the Anonymizer company article. The article on Xerox does this perfectly. LanceCottrell (talk) 14:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

You sound like a nice chap, Lance Cottrell, unlike some folk *coughTimLangdellcough*. However, I must protest that this is a slightly silly enforcement of trademark. The article is called 'anonymizer' because anonymizer is the adjective version of anonymous. An anonymizer anonymizes stuff. That's why this page (which is about anonymizers) is named 'anonymizer'. The trouble with your claim is that I could reasonably claim the same if I trademarked a company called 'Water' and then went to the wikipedia page on water and complained. And it would be just as silly. :/ 118.210.250.178 (talk) 10:15, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

The term "Anonymizer" was not really used before our company coined the term. LanceCottrell (talk) 20:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

But Lance, did or did not your company choose that name just because is was the noun-form of an already extant, widely recognized English language word? The function of hiding something, including an IP address, would already be referred to as "anonymising" and one who anonymizes would be an anonymizer.

If your intention was to preserve the name of your company from appearing in English language speakers' normal everyday speech when they talk on the topic of anonymizing internet IP addresses, then perhaps you should have not chosen as a company name a word which already and would continue to naturally appear in everyday speech prior to your company's existence. Right? XEROX is a prime example of a made up word with no previous semantics.

Perhaps this can be resolved by a simple spelling change. "Anonymizer" is an arguably peculiar spelling of the idea of "one who anonymises". According to my dictionary, an alternative spelling of the verb form is "anonymise" which would realize a noun form as "anonymiser" (no 'z').

At any rate, and I am not a lawyer - but I wouldn't trust one who told me otherwise either- it seems as if you cannot retroactively seize the semantics of an in-use part of the English language as your private property.

You can certainly have it as your company name and you can defend it against competitors trying to masquerade their product or confuse potential buyers that their product is yours but Wikipedia is not selling any product that could be confused with your fine product, so it's hard to see how this applies.

It seems to me that they're using a part of the English language "anonymizer" which has been in use a very very long time prior to the internet. That word naturally and rightly applies to all anonymizers of all kinds of information, not excluding IP addresses.

I feel through your words and demeanor that you're one of the world's good guys and I suppose you're just doing what your lawyers bid you to do, nevertheless it's hard to see how this can be right. You can't retroactively seize as your personal property the meaning of an already in-use word.

Purpose
The "Purpose" section seems riddled with weasel words and unattributed, odd declarations. "Some may view".. "illegal government snooping"? I don't even know what to call that last phrase. Oh that government, spying on people. Illegally. What? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.188.26 (talk) 18:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Um... actually, the govenment can't do whatever it wants. Remember the wiretapping scandals? To "spy" on people, the government has to get a warrant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.186.65.48 (talk) 20:50, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Tone?
I'm really not a huge fan of the tone in this article, it seems quite negative and almost critical of anonymizing web proxies and doesn't describe any of the benefits or positive uses of them, such as protecting one's basic human right to privacy. Just because someone is using a proxy doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. The tone of this article seems to assume otherwise. 24.167.36.53 (talk) 04:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article is disputed
The POV tag was added today. It says, "Please see the discussion on the talk page," but I can't find anything on the talk page about POV, except for the "Tone?" section added December 2009. Did I miss something?

About a week ago, I removed an unsupported statement that seemed to have a religious bias. Other than that, I can't see anything that seems non-NPOV.

I did not write this article, but would like to help improve it. You can help too. How can we improve the article?

Thanks. Wikfr (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that I see no obvious POV violation for this article. The author does explain within the article that Anonymizers can be used for both legal and illegal purposes and details these in full.

I do not see how much more could be done to make this more mutual.

Any ideas?

Sirkus (talk) 11:44, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Requested move 24 January 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Non-contested move  (t &#183; c)  buidhe  00:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Anonymizer → Anonymous proxy – Anonymizer is a brand name(WP:NPOVTITLE), there are a number of different "anonymizer" products available for entirely unrelated purposes (e.g. photo anonymizer): first page of a google search showed only 3 relevant to this article, 4 unrelated products, 2 wiki pages (this one and company one), one link to the anonymizer company. All results for the first page of google for "anonymous proxy" were relevant to this article (WP:COMMONNAME). If someone mentioned an anonymizer to me I would have to ask them to clarify, if they were to mention an anonymous proxy I would know exactly what it meant (WP:PRECISE). From my POV this is clear cut, I'm putting it in the talk page as it has been mentioned before so wanted to check no one has a good reason to oppose. Editor/123 21:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Editor/123 As a follow-up, do you think "Anonymizer" should target the company's article or the general usage? If the former, you should file a RM at Talk:Anonymizer (company) to move it to the base name. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  00:59, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * buidhe Targeting in terms of redirect or article title? IMO redirect should be to the company, more accurate and both articles link to the other at the top of the page in the see also template so shouldn’t cause issues. I’m leaning towards the company article title remaining the same, some people do use “anonymizer” to refer to this article its just not the most common or accurate name Editor/123 15:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

anonymizer examples defunct or require account
Article includes "Examples of anonymizer websites include Anonymouse, Anonymiz.com, Anonymize, Anonymizer, IDZap, Ultimate Anonymity, The Cloak and GhostSurf Platinum." Most of those seem to be defunct (got domain names from the Google Book reference), and wondering if they should be cut from the list of examples. And maybe add domain names to the 2 anonymizers that still work (assuming those 2 work for those who get a username):
 * http://anonymouse.org/ : website online, but no free anonymizer. Tried to use to visit Amazon.com (http and https) and both times got error "Only the VIP-Version of Anonymouse supports encrypted connections!"
 * Anonymiz.com : website online, but their anonymizer seems to be gone.
 * Anonymize.net is now a "for sale" page. (cybersquatted?)
 * Anonymizer.com now forwards to ntrepidcorp.com (and I don't see an anonymizer there)
 * IDZap.com : domain still registered (expires 2030), but website seems to be down.
 * Ultimate-Anonymity.com : website online, they seem to have replaced their anonymizer with a VPN.
 * http://www.the-cloak.com : website online, anonymizer is proxify.com which is "Free for 3 days then $30..." (and trying to use anonymizer sends you to proxify page asking for a proxify username and password)
 * GhostSurf Platinum (tenebril.com/consumer) i don't trust the javascripts, but archive.org Wayback says "Osta tämä verkko-osoite" (translates to "Buy this web address") --EarthFurst (talk) 09:41, 29 April 2022 (UTC)