are you guys just talking about proxies?
Yes.
Anonymizing offers a valuable layer of protection by routing your communication through a third-party proxy server that substitutes its Internet address for yours before forwarding your packets to the intended destination. GhostSurf is a good choice. It covers all the basics, the most central of which is hiding your IP address. But it also offers encryption and antispyware features.
You can turn anonymizing on and off, so you can surf the Net directly when desired. For ex. turn off anonymizing during email runs and visits to a few Web sites you trust. The main reason for doing this is that Ghostsurf does eat up quite a bit of memory and can slow you down.
Some more info from an article "Surf the Web Anonymously"
When you surf the Web, your life is an open book. Your IP address, your Internet cache, browser history, and more is open to snooping. Each packet you send generally travels through several computers to reach its destination.
Along the way, the packet can be intercepted and used by others to track your Internet activities -- or to attack your computer, maliciously or otherwise. Further, web sites share information about your visit with others to target you with ads that match your activity profile. If you're a regular web adventurer, these and other ungracious activities happen to you frequently with or without your knowledge.
Anonymizing software can provide a key layer of protection by routing your communication with most web sites through an anonymous proxy server that substitutes its Internet address for yours. That way, you never actually "touch" the web site; the proxy does it for you. And so your private information is kept private.