This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||
|
There is plenty of material for expansion in the two cited references. I am busy with other pages now, so please be WP:BOLD. Dhaluza 18:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I saw something in an ad about anonymizer software and wanted to see what it was, I went to the anonymizer INC website and my internet security said that this site put my computer at risk for being hacked, and proxy avoidence, not sure what the second one is but the first one is obvious, mabey this should be mentioned. [January 13th 08 4:08pm Pacific time]
Anonymizer is an internationally registered trademark of Anonymizer Inc. It should not be used in this generic sense any more than "Xerox" should be generic for "photocopy".
Good luck with that. But out of curiosity, what would be your suggested alternative? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fhapgood ( talk • contribs) 16:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
It is not so much luck as a legal issue. This is a clear violation of trademark. There are plenty of other terms including "privacy enhancing technology", "anonymity system", "anonymous proxy", "anonymous network", etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LanceCottrell ( talk • contribs) 16:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
how about calling it "anonymous internet browsing" or "anonymous web browsing"? I've heard those phrases used a lot in conversation. Hatfields ( talk) 11:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
If the law did not require the company to actively protect its trademark (or else loose it), I would love to see the article have our name at the top. As it is, we do need to actively try to stop infringing uses. I would support either of the above names for the article, and would support having a link to the article right at the top of the Anonymizer company article. The article on Xerox does this perfectly. LanceCottrell ( talk) 14:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
You sound like a nice chap, Lance Cottrell, unlike some folk *coughTimLangdellcough*. However, I must protest that this is a slightly silly enforcement of trademark. The article is called 'anonymizer' because anonymizer is the adjective version of anonymous. An anonymizer anonymizes stuff. That's why this page (which is about anonymizers) is named 'anonymizer'. The trouble with your claim is that I could reasonably claim the same if I trademarked a company called 'Water' and then went to the wikipedia page on water and complained. And it would be just as silly. :/ 118.210.250.178 ( talk) 10:15, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
The term "Anonymizer" was not really used before our company coined the term. LanceCottrell ( talk) 20:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
But Lance, did or did not your company choose that name just because is was the noun-form of an already extant, widely recognized English language word? The function of hiding something, including an IP address, would already be referred to as "anonymising" and one who anonymizes would be an anonymizer.
If your intention was to preserve the name of your company from appearing in English language speakers' normal everyday speech when they talk on the topic of anonymizing internet IP addresses, then perhaps you should have not chosen as a company name a word which already and would continue to naturally appear in everyday speech prior to your company's existence. Right? XEROX is a prime example of a made up word with no previous semantics.
Perhaps this can be resolved by a simple spelling change. "Anonymizer" is an arguably peculiar spelling of the idea of "one who anonymises". According to my dictionary, an alternative spelling of the verb form is "anonymise" which would realize a noun form as "anonymiser" (no 'z').
At any rate, and I am not a lawyer - but I wouldn't trust one who told me otherwise either- it seems as if you cannot retroactively seize the semantics of an in-use part of the English language as your private property.
You can certainly have it as your company name and you can defend it against competitors trying to masquerade their product or confuse potential buyers that their product is yours but Wikipedia is not selling any product that could be confused with your fine product, so it's hard to see how this applies.
It seems to me that they're using a part of the English language "anonymizer" which has been in use a very very long time prior to the internet. That word naturally and rightly applies to all anonymizers of all kinds of information, not excluding IP addresses.
I feel through your words and demeanor that you're one of the world's good guys and I suppose you're just doing what your lawyers bid you to do, nevertheless it's hard to see how this can be right. You can't retroactively seize as your personal property the meaning of an already in-use word.
The "Purpose" section seems riddled with weasel words and unattributed, odd declarations. "Some may view".. "illegal government snooping"? I don't even know what to call that last phrase. Oh that government, spying on people. Illegally. What? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.188.26 ( talk) 18:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm really not a huge fan of the tone in this article, it seems quite negative and almost critical of anonymizing web proxies and doesn't describe any of the benefits or positive uses of them, such as protecting one's basic human right to privacy. Just because someone is using a proxy doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. The tone of this article seems to assume otherwise. 24.167.36.53 ( talk) 04:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
The POV tag was added today. It says, "Please see the discussion on the talk page," but I can't find anything on the talk page about POV, except for the "Tone?" section added December 2009. Did I miss something?
About a week ago, I removed an unsupported statement that seemed to have a religious bias. Other than that, I can't see anything that seems non-NPOV.
I did not write this article, but would like to help improve it. You can help too. How can we improve the article?
Thanks. Wikfr ( talk) 21:49, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree that I see no obvious POV violation for this article. The author does explain within the article that Anonymizers can be used for both legal and illegal purposes and details these in full.
I do not see how much more could be done to make this more mutual.
Any ideas?
Sirkus ( talk) 11:44, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Anonymizer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 22:17, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Non-contested move ( non-admin closure) ( t · c) buidhe 00:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Anonymizer → Anonymous proxy – Anonymizer is a brand name( WP:NPOVTITLE), there are a number of different "anonymizer" products available for entirely unrelated purposes (e.g. photo anonymizer): first page of a google search showed only 3 relevant to this article, 4 unrelated products, 2 wiki pages (this one and company one), one link to the anonymizer company. All results for the first page of google for "anonymous proxy" were relevant to this article ( WP:COMMONNAME). If someone mentioned an anonymizer to me I would have to ask them to clarify, if they were to mention an anonymous proxy I would know exactly what it meant ( WP:PRECISE). From my POV this is clear cut, I'm putting it in the talk page as it has been mentioned before so wanted to check no one has a good reason to oppose. Editor/123 21:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Article includes "Examples of anonymizer websites include Anonymouse, Anonymiz.com, Anonymize, Anonymizer, IDZap, Ultimate Anonymity, The Cloak and GhostSurf Platinum." Most of those seem to be defunct (got domain names from the Google Book reference), and wondering if they should be cut from the list of examples. And maybe add domain names to the 2 anonymizers that still work (assuming those 2 work for those who get a username):