Anonymizing services like TOR, cyber Ghost, and others are becoming increasingly popular as we live more and more of our lives online. While you may have many reasons to be concerned about your online activity being tracked, you also incur some real risks when you use such services to access your HSU accounts.

Logging into a password-protected online resource that's tied to your real name through an anonymizing service can actually undermine your anonymity. No matter whether that resource is HSU, another government agency, or a commercial Internet service, have no doubt that a valid law enforcement request for the identity of the person who logged in from a given internet address at a given time will be answered.

Anonymizing services also have an impact on how HSU combats phishing attacks. When a known compromised account logs in to the HSU networks from a given IP address, the HSU Information Security team watches for other user names logging in from that IP address and lock those accounts. The criminals behind phishing scams are starting to use anonymizing proxy services, and so there is a strong risk you'll get caught up in that whole mess and end up with a locked account.

If you want use these services at home on your personal devices, go ahead. But please don't mix them with your school or work activities - you'll actually undermine the anonymity you're trying to preserve and put yourself at risk.