Your personal information has become big business ... online companies count each registered user's personal info as a valuable asset. .... there are ways around that.

Beyond the creepy feeling of knowing your personal information is being used as a commodity, registration is annoying. You can choose not to register, but sometimes that means not getting the content you want, say, at the New York Times Web site.

Whether you register or not, sites usually track you and collect your information through cookies. There are several ways to get around all of this tracking.

Anonymous registration
A site called Bugmenot.com uses a community approach. Click here to read more

You should think about the fact that this kind of service could be considered stealing. After all, the content sites are giving you the content you'd otherwise pay for, in exchange for your personal info. You're cheating them of valid personal info. It may or may not be technically a violation, depending on the site, so be warned.

Anonymous surfing
But even if you use a Bugmenot.com login, sites can still track your machine through cookies. They just won't know your name and zip code. ... there are several Web sites that allow you to surf the Web anonymously.
The most famous is Anonymizer.

Click here to read more

Plenty of other sites offer anonymous surfing for free. The only one I've used is the Cloak, which offers anonymous, encrypted surfing.

Serious anonymity
Anonymous surfing sites aren't foolproof. Some kinds of JavaScript can break the anonymity. If you truly want a guaranteed way to prevent the sites you visit from knowing anything about you, you need to run some software on your side combined with a proxy service. Anonymizer offers this kind of service. Whether you want to protect your private information or not, it's important to know that these kinds of services exist.