Anonymous browsing and the future of advertising

I’ve started to look at anonymous browsing.

So far, the schemes that are really anonymous are pretty kludge-y.  It looks like you find a path through cooperative servers to near your endpoint, and then, like Foxface from The Hunger Games, sprints over the last link or two to the destination.  Effective, if what you want is to keep from being tracked.  But not easy to use, and probably not destined for the mainstream.

Is this the best outcome?  Widespread use of anonymizers leads to a “distributed denial of data” attack on brands and merchants.  I have no great love for brands and merchants — they certainly treat consumers pretty cavalierly — but the outcome I want is to have (moe) power over them instead of them having (more) power over me, and ultimately, perhaps, to share power so that we both get part of what we want.  It’s the Intention Economy all over again (I know, I’ve been on this like a broken record, but Searl’s book is a great set of ideas).