“Anonymizer services are becoming more and more important, as governments try to spy on us. And it’s not limited to Middle Eastern countries anymore, as we all well know. These types of apps give us back some power.”

Mal’s point is well made, and one I totally agree with. Still, there are more obvious reasons, you may have, for anonymous surfing, including – surfing in internet cafes, public terminals in libraries, or hotel business centers.

In fact, you may want to surf anonymously on any PC where you don’t want to leave traces of your private surfing activities to ensure protection from snooping web sites, annoying advertisers, employers, or curious family members.

Spotflux, a relatively new anonymous client application, comes with a bit of a twist. Not only can you surf the web more securely with data encryption (effectively hiding your IP address), but the developer advises that Spotflux continuously scans and protects your connection against inbound malware threats. A step in the right direction.

Starting the application is a simple process as shown below. Simple click on “Enable” and ………

in a matter of a few seconds, a secure connection is established.

Using the free application CurrPorts I’ve confirmed that the secure connection has in fact been established, as shown in the following screen capture.

Once the connection has been established, your Browser will open to the Spotflux home page.

Fast Facts:

Significant points:

There are no ads and the application doesn’t have to run in the background, or at startup.

Normal surfing (hopping from site to site), showed only a limited slowdown in connection speed.

As with all such applications, a leap of faith is required. While the application does shield you from prying eyes, the developer has full access. You need to consider the implications. In other words – do you trust the developer.

Quick speed test:

In this illustration, downloading a relatively small file without Spotflux up and running, I maximized my connection speed as shown below. I repeated this process 10 times with the same results.

Repeating this process (10 times), with Spotflux up and running, the maximum throughput I could achieve was 744 KB/sec.

This second screen capture illustrates the relative consistency in the download throughput.

Fooling a website:

Every site that you visit has access to your IP address. And, as a test of the application’s cloaking ability, I visited an online dating site. Without the application running, you’ll note in the following screen capture, the site correctly identified my location as Canada.

With the application running, the same website identified me as an American. Rightfully so, since the connection runs through New York.

System requirements: Windows XP, Vista, Win 7.

Download at: Spotflux

Recommendation: If you’re looking for a free application which will keep your web surfing private, Spotflux is definitely worth a look.

A big “Thank You” to regular reader Charlie L. for turning me on to this application.