Don’t hurry…
You should take good security measures for protecting yourself and your investigations.
Surfing on the net is like talking loud on the street: many people are able to listen…
When you connect to a website or you use a search engine, usually the website keep your IP address.
The IP address is the number that identifies your Internet connection and allows tracing you. So it’s better to connect from a public wireless which is not linked to you!
And even though you are connected from a public place, you can be traced by your MAC address. The MAC address is a unique code which is associated with your wireless card (i.e. with your laptop ). But no worries, you can easily spoof it (Macchanger for Linux is an example of a command you can use)…
Your computer itself keeps many traces of your activity, even though you delete everything you think compromising…
Here are a few good tools to be familiar with:
TOR: Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. Tor can’t solve all anonymity problems, but it helps a lot.
https://www.torproject.org/
DISK ENCRYPTION: technology which protects information by converting it into unreadable code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people. You can encrypt your hard disk or a usb disk to render the information unavailable to people who don’t know the password. The best is to use LUKS on Linux, otherwise Truecrypt on Windows or Mac.
TAILS: a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity, and helps you to: use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship;
all connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network; leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly; use state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging.
https://tails.boum.org/
These are just some basic hints, spend time to read and learn how to be truly anonymous on the Internet before acting!
You can find a lot of material and tutorials on the web, for instance a good text is:
http://zinelibrary.info/files/FINAL.pdf
Make a lot of tests before acting!