David: Aren't people who want to surf anonymously pretty much only doing nefarious things? Isn't this a way to illegally download stuff, surf porn, and otherwise hide "bad" activities? Couldn't keeping things anonymous help "the terrorists"?

Lance: That is a common perception, but incorrect. There are people who might try to use Anonymizer for illegal activities. However, we have put safeguards into place to stop them from using our solutions for nefarious reasons. For example, people can't use Anonymizer products to send spam email or launch distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on other sites. They can't set up a terrorist Web site or create a child porn site.

They simply get to enjoy the same level of privacy that they would expect in the physical world. Many of our customers are actually local and national law enforcement organizations and Anonymizer has been a key tool in numerous investigations.

David: Can you go into more detail about this and tell us some stories?

Lance: Anonymizer provides privacy solutions for several government agencies that utilize the Internet in their research, such as with anti-terrorist investigations. Unfortunately, we are unable to share the details of these programs due to the confidential nature of this work.

David: Can you tell us some really interesting stories about how anonymous surfing was good for society as a whole? Weren't there surfing restrictions in some Asian countries? Can anonymous surfing help get information into those countries?

Lance: The Internet has been highly censored in China and Iran for years. There are also recent reports that other countries, such as Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, are filtering the content so that citizens cannot access certain information on the Internet.

Anonymizer has been working with the Voice of America, for example, to enable open access to the citizens of Iran. We enable people to view Internet content without filters or fear of persecution simply because they wanted to learn more about the world.

Anonymizer provided anonymous access to discussion sites during the Kosovo conflict, enabling people to communicate information about abuses without fear of retaliation. Following 9/11 Anonymizer provided the ability to give terrorist tips to the FBI anonymously. This project (in cooperation with the FBI) lead to over 25,000 tips that probably would not otherwise have been received.

David: How big a problem is identity theft now?

Lance: Identity theft continues to be a growing concern. The FTC received over 635,000 consumer complaints during calendar year 2004 -- 61% of these represented fraud and 39% were related to identity theft. I'd say it's a pretty big problem. Internet security threats are increasingly sophisticated, financially motivated and perpetrated by serious con artists who, quite literally, mean business. The biggest trend over the last few years has been the increasing involvement of organized crime in online criminal activity.