Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service for Mac OS

• TOR

  "Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. (TOR also has available a preconfigured Tor Browser set to use the TOR Proxy by default.)"

• Hotspot Shield

  "A free VPN client based on OpenVPN. Unlike other anonymous surfing options, such as JonDo, Hotspot Shield encrypts all of your Internet activities and not just web browsing. This is ideal for people who want to anonymise other applications without the need to 'proxify' them, which can be a complicated and tedious task." (Review)

• JonDo

  "A VPN client written in Java that routes data across the JonDo network. It has an attractive and user-friendly GUI, and displays lots of visual information about your connection to the JonDo network. The free service offers 30-50 kbps speeds and unlimited bandwidth." (Review)

• proXPN

  "A VPN client based on OpenVPN. It encrypts all of your Internet activities and uses a 512-bit level of encryption with 2,048-bit certificates for users to achieve high levels of anonymity. Free accounts are limited to 100 kbps and registration is mandatory in order to use the service." (Review)

Best Free Antivirus for Mac OS

• Avast! Free Antivirus

  "Avast has steadily been improving its detection rates over the past few years and now ranks with the some of the best. It has the most features of all the free antivirus with full real-time capabilities including web, e-mail, IM, P2P and network shields, boot-time scanning, and a behavioural blocker.

  The new version brings even more features including an internet site ratings plugin, script malware protection and a limited (non-configurable) sandboxing feature. Although the sandbox is a very useful semi-automated security feature, the default settings involves a pop up to ask whether a software should be sandboxed for not. Lastly Avast is relatively light on resources." (Review)

• ClamXav

  "A free virus scanner for Mac OS X, using the very popular ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end and has the ability to detect both Windows and Mac threats.

  ClamXav can be setup up as passive or active: scan only the files you tell it to or your entire hard drive. You can also choose to activate Sentry to monitor your hard drive and scan new files as they arrive."

Best Free Firewall for Mac OS

• NoobProof

  "NoobProof is a firewall configuration tool for Mac OS X. It has a list of services. Each service can be allowed or blocked. You can also selectively allow or block specified hosts or subnets. You can add or remove services from the list, and you can create new services."

• WaterRoof

  "A more powerful graphic frontend for Mac OS X built-in IPFW firewall. You can build ipfw rules easily, scan your mac for running network services and filter open ports with one mouse click, list and ban remote hosts connected to your mac, and more."

Best Free Internet Safety Check for Mac OS

• WOT (Web of Trust)

  "WOT (Web of Trust) from WOT Services is the Editor's Choice because it leads in many areas: compatibility and integration with seamless operation; flexible options; searching; warning and blocking; and user input. It only loses in areas that it doesn't compete in: meta-rating (combining the results from several raters as in Link Extend) and scanning.

  WOT is the best implemented and the best documented rater - you can even view the source code, but it is also the most heavily criticized." (Review)

Best Free Password Manager for Mac OS

• LastPass

  "LastPass is a combination of both web service and software. With the web service you can access your data anywhere, while the software which runs on your computer allows you to view your data even when you're not connected to the Internet. When you install the software, the plugins or extensions for supported browsers are automatically installed.

  It is as safe as it can possibly get and uses the same encryption algorithm that the US Government uses for top secret data. The key to decrypt the data is only known to you as all encryption/decryption occurs on your computer, and the entire site is encrypted and verified by Comodo." (Review)

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