Anonymous Browser: IDsecure
E-mail Security: ZixMail
Cookie Manager: Cookie Crusher
Personal Firewall: ZoneAlarm Pro

When it comes to privacy, you can't be too safe. Whether fighting cookies or guarding credit card numbers, we suggest you get the best individual product to cover each of your vulnerabilities. IDsecure, from IDzap, provides the most effective way to maintain your anonymity when browsing. This anonymous browser is the easiest and fastest among those we tested. IDsecure encrypts all data going to and from your browser, so your information remains private, and it even replaces URLs and site names in the browser's history with nonsense character strings.

For secure e-mail, ZixIt's ZixMail tops the pack. It lets you send encrypted messages to anyone (no matter what client the recipient uses) from your existing Microsoft Outlook 98 or 2000 client.

To keep track of who's using cookies to track you, a dedicated cookie manager is the best option. For this we recommend The Limit Software's Cookie Crusher 2.6. Both Cookie Crusher and Kookaburra's Cookie Pal offer excellent tools for filtering cookies, but Cookie Crusher is more impressive, because it can indicate what a cookie's purpose is when you first encounter it, taking away much of the guesswork when deciding whether to accept a new cookie.

An essential step to protecting your privacy is to safeguard the information on your system. Offering the most robust feature set of these personal firewalls, Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm Pro forms a barrier between your system and the Internet, protecting against intrusion, guarding against many types of malicious e-mail attachments, and preventing programs from secretly sending personal information out over the Internet.