It's tempting to assume that your internet surfing is anonymous. In fact, this is far from the truth. GhostSurf 2007 Platinum provides a suite of utilities designed to turn this illusion into reality.
A central window provides access to six utilities. The Privacy Control Center allows you to control how visible you are on the internet, from simply blocking cookies to routing through an intermediary IP address, thus masking your physical and logical location. There's also 56-bit encryption to stop others snooping on your network traffic.
Many websites require cookies to function properly, and internet connection speeds drop as the Privacy Control Center deploys its various security measures, so thankfully you can tailor security levels to individual sites. This means that trusted sites can be surfed with little protection, while less reputable corners of the internet can be treated with caution.
The SpyCatcher utility scans and monitors your PC for signs of spyware. Scans can be manually initiated or run to a schedule and you can specifically protect against different types of spyware. A useful system-analysis tool within SpyCatcher tells you what processes and files are running on your computer. This provides far more information than the Windows Task Manager.
Of the remaining tools, Privacy Auditor keeps an eye on your internet connection for the transmission of your personal details, while AdArmour blocks pop-up ads and lets you control website components. TracksCleaner sweeps away application and browser histories, although only Internet Explorer is supported.
The only flaw is that the applications don't share a common interface, but GhostSurf 2007 Platinum is good value and has useful tools for those who are concerned about internet security.
System Specifications
Requires Windows 2000 or later, 350MHz processor, 64MB RAM, 16MB disk space
Author: David McKinnon
Computer Shopper Online