NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield
NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield
NetConceal Anonymity Security Shield is an interesting offering providing users with the ability to choose their proxy from an automatically generated list. In addition to using the proxy for Web traffic, NetConceal also offers the promise of being able to use the proxy for other IP services as well, such as instant messaging or email.
Setup for NetConceal
You can also specify which geography you want the proxy to be from as well as specifying SSL-only proxies.
NetConceal options for selecting type and location of the proxy.
Once the proxy has been selected, NetConceal bounces you over to a new screen that is supposed to validate what in fact you’re running with a different IP address.
The NetConceal fake address page
Unfortunately not all of the proxies in the NetConceal list were as reliable as we would have liked. We experienced intermittent connection difficulties with various proxies where sometimes the proxy worked and passed traffic reliably and sometimes it didn’t.
The NetConceal start window in the browser warns that you need to stay in the same window to be anonymous. But once you start surfing, there is no indication either in the task bar, navigation bar or otherwise that you’re surfing with a different proxy. Additionally, not all sites were accessible, including the third-party sites we attempted to visit to verify the proxy and the IP address.
Once launched, there is no simple dashboard to just switch proxies or to switch a proxy off (other than closing the window that first started browsing with).
The ability to practically anonymously surf the Web is a great idea, but as was the case with the browser, proxy connections for non-browser internet activities were not always 100% reliable.