Techniques for anonymous internet access

A machine-implemented method implemented and residing in a non-transitory computer-readable medium and for processing on a processor-enabled device, comprising:

• receiving, by the processor-enabled device, a request to access an external resource over the Internet from a user within a firewall environment;
• determining, by the processor-enabled device, in response to a policy that the request is to be masked when routed over the Internet by having the processor-enabled device establish a secure connection with an anonymizer to access the external resource on behalf of the user;
• and
• routing, by the processor-enabled device, the request through the anonymizer that hides a relationship between the user and the external resource from network onlookers, the anonymizer selected from a list of available anonymizers also based on the evaluation of the policy, where different users or classes of users uses different ones of the anonymizers.

A computer-implemented system, comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium configured with a policy store residing in the non-transitory computer-readable medium and accessible to an anonymizer selection service;
• and
• a proxy machine that is a processor enabled device and is configured with the anonymizer selection service, the anonymizer executes on the proxy machine within a firewalled environment, wherein the proxy machine acts as an intermediary to Internet access from and to the firewalled environment;
• the anonymizer selection service intercepts uniform resource locator (URL) link requests from users within the firewalled environment that are directed to external world-wide web (WWW) sites and acquires policies from the policy store, evaluates the policies to determine when particular URL requests are to be re-routed through anonymizers to mask an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the firewalled environment from where the URL requests originate, each request is evaluated in view of a particular policy to select a particular anonymizer from the anonymizers to service that request and each request is tied to a secure connection between a particular user and a particular anonymizer.