So far, these seals have manifested themselves as visual labels displayed on Web sites. The first such privacy seal service was launched in 1996 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and CommerceNet. This program could easily be extended into the privacy area as well. Other industry groups have developed additional privacy seals and other self-regulatory programs, and I expect several new programs to be announced over the coming months. While consumers can often benefit from revealing personal information, there are many situations in which they would rather remain anonymous.
Several tools are available to help people browse the Web anonymously.
Because the request is submitted by the Anonymizer rather than the user, information about that person is not revealed to the Web site. The Anonymizer is easy to use and provides both free and paid-subscription services. Users must trust the Anonymizer to protect their privacy, however, and this tool does not prevent users' Internet service providers from logging their Web activities. Other anonymity tools do not require users to trust a third party to maintain anonymity. Most of these tools, however, are still research prototypes.