A popular Internet privacy service that lets Web surfers visit sites anonymously has fixed several serious flaws, and now the service's founder is offering a reward to the finder of the bugs.. . .
A popular Internet privacy service that lets Web surfers visit sites anonymously has fixed several serious flaws, and now the service's founder is offering a reward to the finder of the bugs.

Bennett Haselton, an Internet filtering activist who runs the Peacefire Web site, found the problems with Anonymizer.com, a five-year-old service that shields users from tracking by Web sites and their Internet providers.

Haselton "came up with a new way of exploiting (Web) standards," Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell explained Monday. "They're pretty subtle."

Many major commercial sites cringe when security researchers find a hole. But Anonymizer actually encourages it through a "bug bounty."

Haselton's reward: three free years of the Anonymizer service, which costs $50 a year. Cottrell said the offer stands for anyone else who can find security holes in the service.

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