In practice, however, a determined site owner can exploit advanced features of modern web browsers to effectively bypass these services, usually by using JavaScript or special html tags to collect IP addresses and silently redirect traffic away from the intermediary. Several of the most popular anonymisers are vulnerable to these tactics.
The popularity of anonymisers has risen dramatically in line with the huge volume of unwanted e-mail received by most internet users and an increasing awareness that their behavior is being tracked. They are especially popular with people visiting sites with questionable content, such as pornography, who hope that their tracks will be covered and their identities secure.
Ultimately, however, anyone with a good reason n to discover those identities (law-enforcement agencies, for example) can simply recover them from the service, so they are not a safe refuge for people engaging in illegal online activities. Anonymisers can also interfere with the normal operation of many useful websites, which may refuse access to users who disable cookies or pop-up windows.
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