It makes some of us nervous that Google and other Web companies are building huge collections of data about our surfing habits. But doing something about it means dealing with a lot more inconvenience than most of us are willing to abide by. That is what I learned in my week of trying to be invisible, at least online.

There are several ways of surfing anonymously; the most common involves going "stealth." The idea is to surf as you normally would, but mask the information that could be used to discern your identity. This means cloaking your Internet protocol address, a unique number identifying a computer on the Web. That way, companies can't tell your PC searched on "avoiding taxes." Last month, after AOL leaked Web-search data from 650,000 customers, infuriating privacy advocates, I decided to go anonymous via a program called Anonymous Surfing. There are other anonymizing programs, such as Tor. Their users include, besides privacy-conscious surfers, undercover detectives and corporate whistleblowers.

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