Tor and other such "anonymous" networks...

Depending on your level of computer/internet savvy (and/or corporate firewall), you may or may not know about (or use) Tor (The Onion Router) or other such "anonymous" networks (I2P is another). It is one way to surf anonymously and usually bypass corporate firewalls. Unfortunately, the basis of the Tor network is other Tor users who host Tor nodes (how many times can I use Tor in one sentence?).

In simple terms, although your internet traffic may be anonymous to the web sites you are visiting, anything you transmit to those sites (logins/passwords/personal info) can be captured by the computers that are making you anonymous.
The reason I highlight this is because recently, a security expert captured lots of usernames and passwords by operating tor nodes. Here's the link to the article from Ars Technica:
Link

The security expert released the info he captured to the public and of course his site was immediately taken down. But, it's back up and here's the link to his recent blog post about the incident:
Link

So, the point is, always be careful of such "anonymous" networks and proxies. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then read at least the first article and learn something.


And as a bonus feature, here are a few tips on how to bypass corporate firewalls (there are many posts on the net about this, but I will summarize a few):
1. Use Google Translator (translate a page from english to english)
2. Use a site like anonymouse.org (not secure)
3. Run your own SSH server (if I know you, you can use mine)