What does it mean to be anonymous on the internet? The thing is that anonymity on the internet is associated with a few different types of activity. Some people interpret the term to be synonymous with privacy, ie what I do online can be recorded, logged, and made into a statistic so long as it can't be traced to my home address. Other people associate it with hacking and online criminal activity, meaning that no one should get into my business or see what I'm doing because I don't want to get caught. This article is about the former (privacy online).

Smartphones are becoming one of the main ways that we access the internet. In our busy lives we leave the house before 8, get back after 6, and some of us are out the door again for a night out if we even make it home that couple of hours. Android and iPhone are the main competitors for smartphone OS, though Symbian takes a small piece of the pie (and it's getting smaller). The point is that we connect to the internet all over the place, and much of this can be traced back to our original device, our real email address, phone number, and maybe even home address. The truth is that most of us don't know what's known about us when we log into a site, or even if we just visit and browse.

Our IP address is like our online ID even when we don't officially log into sites. The IP address can be linked to our smartphone.

We don't need to be blogging about controversial subjects or preparing to take down international corporations from the inside to make use of anonymity online (though it would help). Anonymity for Android and iPhone users is taken for granted most of the time.

You last online shopping trip IRL - did you let the store record your real address, phone number, and list the items you bought? Why should we do it online. Last time you read a book, did you let the publisher record your info and try to promote future releases to you? Does your bank know what magazines you subscribe to? Why should your ISP. Can the government listed to what you talk to your friends about over the land line? Why should they be able to listen to your VoIP conversations or chats? This is the meaning of privacy online.

That's all of the "Why?", but what about the 'HOW?". Use a VPN. It's the most anonymous you can get online. This way, they can take all the statistical information they want, but none of the data is labeled with your name. You can't stop a site from collecting information, but you can stop them from finding out where it originates from.

A VPN is like an encrypted detour for your traffic online. Rather than communicating with other users and web servers on the internet, you send your Android and iPhone traffic to a private network of servers to reroute your data through "VPN Tunnels". Encryption keeps hackers out. Tunnels keep eavesdroppers at bay. You can use PPTP or L2TP VPN protocols as an anonymous VPN for Android. L2TP will provide you with better encryption and privacy, while PPTP will be easier to set up and give you faster connection speeds.