I am looking for the best anonymizer available where my main goal is
to keep all internet activities safe from being intercepted or
analyzed by my isp. It seems the most secure techniques are companies
that use encryption, vpn tunneling, offshore servers, and do not keep
logs such as www.findnot.com and www.metropipe.net Do these services
have any weaknesses?   Is there an unbiased webpage reviewing
different anonymizing services?

A good answer will include the best option available and any weaknesses.

You could also consider tor, which provides a similar service for
free, but is slower.  Some other people who provide similar things:
http://www.blacknet.biz/ http://www.bypass.cc
http://www.secure-tunnel.com http://www.anonymizer.com/

The main weakness is that these systems usually only hide your IP
address, your client software can still give away a lot of information
about you anyway, without you realising it.  There is free software
that can help you there like privoxy, or you can use one of the normal
web anonymising services as well as your IP address hiding.  Metropipe
provides many services by default to help you with this, and findnot
provides software to run on your own computer.

Another negative aspect is that you are completely trusting
findnot/metropipe/whomever with your full data, not just your
browsing, but also your usernames and passwords and probably credit
card details.  They can intercept your communication, so be sure you
trust them.

Another weakness is that they hide many users behind relatively few ip
addresses, so some services probably already blacklist them and you
won't be able to access those services through them.

A restriction to be aware of is that you will only have a certain
traffic transfer allowance per month, although these are usually more
than enough for web browsing, it would just be if you were planning to
download large files a lot that you should be concerned.

Another thing to consider is if you need to use these services from a
place that already has a restrictive firewall in place.  If you do,
there's a good chance that they won't work for you, although at least
metropipe offer some help for this situation.  You could also consider
bypass.cc who are specifically designed for these situations.

My personal take is that findnot appear a little sleazy, they sneakily
try to get you to give them a recurring charge on your credit card,
I've read user stories of them taking a fee to cancel that charge as
well.  I opted to use their fully anonymous payment system via
Paily.com and was unimpressed that the password that I'd filled in on
their page was transferred to Paily in plain text in the url, this to
me bodes badly.  However, they seem to offer a fast service for a very
good price.  Metropipe seem to offer more services, but are more
expensive for the vpn solution.  You may need to open an e-Gold
account if you plan to do business anonymously with these people.

You may not need these services.  If it is only web browsing that you
want to be anonymous then there are a number of good anonymisers
available.

Hi. 

The weaknesses in those is that you don't have any control over thier
system. If you are under scrutiny by someone of great power they could
force/buy/steal your web activity from the company offering you the
service. Some of those companies may even be the very folks you intend
to hide from?

The simplest way to cover your traffic is to run a proxy on a remote
unix server (linux freebsd or similar) and use putty to build a ssh
tunnel. All net traffic will appear to come from the server and all
traffic between you and the server is encrypted.

More details (with screenshots) here:
http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/proxy-through-ssh/

We use this at work. It costs us nothing as we have unix servers
deployed nationwide and putty on our desktops.

<i>The simplest way to cover your traffic is to run a proxy on a remote
unix server (linux freebsd or similar) and use putty to build a ssh
tunnel. All net traffic will appear to come from the server and all
traffic between you and the server is encrypted.</i>

This is good, but it has the big disadvantage that unless other people
are doing the same thing, you have just moved what is being tracked to
the other computer.  To be anonymous, you need your traffic to be
drowned in other traffic, or you need there to be no way to link you
with your traffic.  If you own the unix server, then you can be traced
and if you don't then you better make sure that whoever does is not
keeping logs.  Usually, you're going to want a solution that both
drowns your traffic AND doesn't keep logs or provide a link to a
machine that you traceably have anything to do with.

I am a regular computer user and I like many others need easy
solutions if we want to consider being anonimous.
I know that:
"The simplest way to cover your traffic is to run a proxy on a remote
unix server (linux freebsd or similar) and use putty to build a ssh
tunnel. All net traffic will appear to come from the server and all
traffic between you and the server is encrypted."

But that is to hard for me, so for years I looked for a company that I
could trust (of course anonymizer was out of my list since they have a
bad reputation and their servers are in the US subject to the US crazy
laws right now)
So my options where MetroPipe and Findnot, I had for a while both
services, but I kept MetroPipe for several reasons which I think will
reply to this question.

- MetroPipe's software doesnt keep logs AT ALL and Findnot does for 5 days.
- MP has a tool called Privacybar and with it you can access the TOR
and Jap networks by you just selecting those options (which for me is
pretty cool) or you can select to use their tunneler (if you have
their service and if you dont you can still use this bar to use those
networks) Tor is slow but you can use the MP for high speed.
- FNot has a cheesy website lol
- Fnot regular service is not secure, "Website locations visited are
viewable by users on local wireless connection, local network, and
ISP. User is exposed to possible local/ISP DNS spoofing. Internet
sites accessed easily monitored by ISP operating DNS server."
- Fnot's vpn is not secure neither "Unexpected Intermittent IP Address
Privacy Breach, Immediate Loss of Anonymity and Unencrypted data sent
directly out to the Internet. Exposure to DNS lookup spoofing."
- Both companies have the same prices and the MetroPipe's is a little
bit more expensive but I know I am secure with them.
- MetroPipe's servers ALL are in countries outside the US and Fnot's
are most of them inside the US.

I hope that this helps you out to find a service that is serious about
privacy and not just sales. (another reason I kept MetroPipe)