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Portable encryption for nervous surfers

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
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  • Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
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Leslie Katz

Between concerns about your Internet goings-on being monitored and fears about having your personal information lifted, trolling the Web is hardly an anonymous activity anymore. Privacy software company Stealth Surfer says it has your back, paranoid surfers.

StealthSurfer II
Credit: Stealth Surfer

The Burbank, Calif., company is out with an upgraded version of its StealthSurfer II, a miniature USB 2.0 flash drive that lets you surf the Web anonymously from any computer, even over a wireless connection.

The StealthSurfer II got generally enthusiastic reviews when it came out last year. The latest addition to the line, the StealthSurfer II ID Protect, started shipping on Monday and comes with a pre-loaded integrated Firefox browser that lets you do your thing in an encrypted mode that masks your IP address and secures data from interception by nefarious sites and Web predators.

The StealthSurfer II ID Protect enables faster browsing than the previous iteration, according to the company, and supports the latest versions of the one-click form-fill utility RoboForm, the Firefox browser (Firefox 1.5.0.2), Thunderbird and Anonymizer, the service that enables the anonymous surfing.

The device will be available in memory configurations of 256MB up to 2GB starting at $99.