Technology: E-Mailers Anonymous

Ever want to send an anonymous comment without your e-mail address giving you away? Here’s a site that does just that–plus new ways to protect your privacy, whether you’re surfing the Web or talking on the phone. –By Wilson Rothman

THEANONYMOUSEMAIL.COM

You can use this $20-per-year service to send e-mails that no one can trace back to you. The recipients can reply and even block you, but they can’t see who you are. Of course, one person’s secret admirer could be another person’s stalker. Although the service doesn’t monitor messages, it will disclose your identity if a court asks for it or to “protect any persons … from imminent harm.”

MYPRIVATELINE.COM

When you’re single, deciding whether or not to hand out your phone number to a potential soul mate can be nerve-racking. This service lets you create an alias of your phone number. Hand it out instead, and if the people calling you turn out creepy, ditch the number and get a new one. You pay $5 for each number; after you have talked for more than 30 min. using that line, the number no longer works. But if half an hour isn’t enough time to discover whether someone is worthy, you can always log on to your account at myprivateline myprivateline.com and tack on more minutes.

ANONYMIZER

The challenge nowadays is to stay anonymous while you’re sitting at your computer, potentially in plain view of hackers or spywaremakers. Anonymizer’s new Total Privacy Suite for the PC anonymizer.com $50 per year) provides a toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox browser that keeps you safe in three ways. First, with Anonymous Surfing, it keeps websites from tracking your physical location by scrambling the address given to you by your Internet service provider. It also provides a spyware-removal tool and a Digital Shredder that makes it easy to ditch your history and other browser info so that nobody looking at your PC will know what sites you’ve visited.

3 TIPS FOR GUARDING YOUR PRIVACY ONLINE

1 Look for the lock

To make sure no one is spying when you send personal information over the Web, use only a secure connection–indicated by a key or lock icon at the bottom of your browser window.

2 Delete, don’t reply

If you reply to spam messages or other e-mail from people you don’t know, it signals that your e-mail address is valid and in use. Don’t give them that clue.

3 Be wary at work

Office computers may be monitored without your knowledge, so avoid carrying out personal transactions on those machines.

For more tips, visit www.eff.org/Privacy

>>LEXAR’S JUMPDRIVE LIGHTNING A hot new USB key-chain drive with 2 GB of storage ($280). Order from lexar.com and have your Lightning laser-engraved with your name at no extra cost.

>>MEMOREX’S M-FLYER TRAVELDRIVE A 2-GB key-chain drive with retractable USB jack ($220; memorex.com) Like the JumpDrive Lightning, it comes with security software that enables you to encrypt your information so it can’t be accessed by others.