What is a good and free way to hide your IP when surfing?  I do get concerned that visiting provider or other web pages will allow them to see too much about me or other sites I visit.  Not extremely computer savy, so not sure here.

And, is it possible throug any service that if someone has collected my IP via email or whatnot, that they can them use that IP and search through a service to see what I've been up to?

You could use Tor to do this.  It relays your web requests through a distributed anonymous network to hide your identity from the web servers.  I've never had to be so paranoid about my surfing habits to feel the need to cover my tracks, and I've worked as a network engineer for many years.

Garlic networks add a bit to the Onion type networks by encrypting


You can also look at I2P