How to Hide My IP Address in few simple steps

What is an IP address?

IP address is abbreviated for Internet Protocol address. It is a unique number assigned to you by your internet service provider when you are connecting to the World Wide Web from any device. The device can be your phone, laptop or tablet. An IP address is necessary to go online. It allows the two devices – between sender and receiver – to connect and exchange information. Without it, the two devices would not know where to send or retrieve information from.

Presently, IP Version 4 and IP Version 6 are two versions of Internet Protocol that are in use. These versions have 2 essential functions to carry - identification and location addressing. The different between the two is that IP Version 4 results in 4 billion addresses approximately whereas IP version 6 results in 3.4 x 1038 addresses.

Hide Your IP Now

Why should you consider hiding your IP?

Hiding your IP protects you by keeping your identity hidden while you surf the internet, exchange emails or download content. It allows you the use of the internet without censorship, giving you free, uninterrupted internet experience. You should hide your IP to:

Hide Your Location:

If you want to access geo-restricted content from another country, then it is important that you mask your IP to hide your original locatiion and get a new IP from a country where your desired content is available.

Circumvent IP restrictions

There are many websites that force IP restrictions on users from another country to prevent access to international users. If you want to access such websites, then you must hide your IP to avoid IP restrictions.

Negate IP Bans:

Again, if you try to access a website or service that is not available in your counrtry, the website will analyze your IP address and ban you from accessing its content. In such cases, you must hide your IP to avoid IP bans.

Block Targeted Attacks:

When your IP is hidden, nobody can hack into your computer and steal your personal data. It becomes really difficult for snoopers and hackers to track online activities and harm you in anyway.

Remain Anonymous on Internet:

Your IP address is like your actual home address, but virtual. Whe you hide your IP address no one can knew what you’re doing online or which content you’re accessing. All they can see is the data being routed from one location to another. Thus you become anonymous on internet, even to your ISP.

Prevent Website Tracking:

When you hide your IP address, you can prevent whatever website you access from tracking your IP and your online traffic. This way they cannot ban your or restrict your access to its content.

Work around Internet Censorship:

By hiding your IP address, you can get access to global content even in countries that are being controlled with internet censorship, especially in countries like China and Russia, where harsh privacy laws are forced on online users.

Reset IP linked download limits:

When you download or stream content online, you consume too many bandwidths. Many ISPs see it as a way to limit your internet speed and bandwidth. When you hide your IP, your ISP cannot know what you’re doing because they cannot track your IP. This way the ISP can’t limit your downloads or bandwidth.

Browse the web anonymously:

Once you hide your IP, no body can see your real IP and location, you become anonymous over the web and no body can restict you from access your desired content or harm you in anyway.

IP masking that lets you access any website

Geo-blocking of websites restricts access to content based upon geographical location of the user. Mask your IP and overcome the restrictions. IP masking gets easy access to sites and content that are censored by the government in different countries.

Connect with friends and family using your favorite sites without any obstacles.
Not only that but also changing IP address also prevented companies from quoting higher prices to you based on location, which means you are free of discrimination based on your location.

Get FastestVPN Now

Is your ISP logging your IP address?

In one word: Yes.

Internet Service Providers can easily log all your internet activity and monitor it whenever the need be. Internet activity such as browsing history and email exchanges are all under scrutiny. However, no one would really be interested. Unless, inopportunely, based on your geographical location, your ISP is obligated to log your data and deliver it to law enforcement as per requirement.

Hide Your IP Now

IP monitoring by country

We have a list of IP logging and monitoring policies globally and how you can shield yourself while simultaneously securing data.

IP logging in the United States

Presently, no law in the United States mandates Internet Service Providers to log customer’s internet activity, though according to the Stored Communications Act an ISP is to share its records with the government if it plans to log customer data. Unfortunately, majority of the ISPs in the United States do keep logs of IP addresses and the websites of their interest; which means that the government has access too, whenever they want.

FCC ruling required ISPs to ask for consent from clients before selling their data. However, this was retracted in April 2017 when Trump signed the congressional legislation. It is expected that in exchange for this, he would sign legislation which would provide corporations to track your IP address and internet activity freely. This would help companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Comcast to profit from your personal information by selling high targeted ads and geographical discrimination.

IP logging in Canada

Similar to the United States, Canada too has no laws overtly needing all ISPs to maintain logs. Although, this does not mean that they do not. Few companies have publically stated that they store IP addresses for 6 months, and some, even for a year.

Even if your ISP is not interested in maintaining logs; under the Copyright Modernization Act, regardless of your Internet Service Provider, they are legally made to maintain your activity logs for 6 months if you are a suspect of copyright violation.

IP logging in Europe

Different countries spread across Europe ensure that Internet Service Providers mandatorily collect subscribers’ data logs of IP addresses and location.

IP logging in the United Kingdom

Snooper’s Charter is an approved bill since November 2016, that call for ISPs and telecommunication companies to preserve clients’ internet browsing history data for one year. According to the bill, these records can also be accessible to public authorities given they have a warrant. This means that one legal warrant gives free reign to government authorities to go through your internet traffic. Change your IP address with a VPN and securely browse through the web.

IP logging in Australia

IP logging in Australia is the longest amongst all the others. Under the metadata retention law, all ISP providers in Australia are under obligation to retain internet traffic data and emails including date, time, recipients, file formats, and size of all attachments – equivalent to two years.

Hide Your IP Now

Best Ways to Hide Your IP Address (pros and cons)

01 - Get a VPN Software

Probably the best and most convenient way for changing your IP is to choose a good VPN service.
Virtual Private Network or VPN is certainly the best and most convenient way for hiding your IP address. It’s a software that allows you to mask our IP address with a different IP from another country to give you instant access to geo-restricted content from the same country, while also encrypt your online traffic to prevent ISP, government and other snooping parties from tracking and stealing your online data.

There is more to what a VPN can do, like:

Give you access to geo-blocked websites and streaming services.
Allows you to torrent safely
Give you Wi-Fi security over public Wi-Fi hotspots.
Device security against malware, viruses and other cyberattacks.
Secure your internet connections
High-grade encryption for your online traffic.

As you can see, the benefits of a Virtual Private Network are precisely the same as the benefits of changing your IP address. As you can see, the benefits of a VPN are almost the same as he benefit of hiding your IP address. A VPN spoofs your original IP address and assigns you a new one from the same country as the server you have connected to. It creates a secure tunnel from your device to its server and from the server to the website you are trying to access. Your whole online traffic routed through this tunnel and no one, not even your ISP can break in and intercept your online data.

Use a Prox – Slower than VPN - 02

Proxy servers are great little tools which act as a bridge in the flow of your internet traffic. These man-in-the-middle servers connect your information packets to their desired destination while changing their appearance as they go through the Proxy.

Proxy is more of a browser-only tool that acts as a middleman that routes your internet traffic. It’s similar to a VPN, but without any kind of online security. Proxy is only good for performing low-stake tasks like accessing geo-restricted websites or becoming anonymous to your ISP. You can install proxy add-ons to your browsers and change your IP to access your desired content. Its highly-effective in giving you access to geo-blocked websites, however, when it comes to accessing non-browser services like Netflix and Hulu, torrenting anonymously, or data encryption, a proxy will be of no use and is not recommended if you want to do all that.

For instance you’re trying to access and buy a PPV event on Sky, you will find that you cannot buy the service if you live outside the UK. This is where a proxy can get you instant access. You simple connect to a UK based proxy service and you start to virtually appear in the UK and thus are able to buy your PPV event.

But that’s pretty much everything a proxy can do. So, if all you want to do is to access geo-restricted content, then proxy is the way to go, if you have more complex tasks to perform including protecting your online data and secure your internet connections then a VPN should be your first choice.

03 - Use TOR – FREE

The Onion Router or TOR is a free client that allows you to become anonymous by connecting to a network of volunteer-operated servers. It allows you to change your IP address the same way a VPN does. TOR gives you better connectivity to global content and is actually considered a better option than using proxy, if you are looking for data protection.

To use TOR, you need to simply download the TOR browser and that’s it. Now, whatever you browse, everything will route through multiple TOR servers and you data will also be secured with standard level encryption.

However, there are certain drawback to using TOR. Since TOR routes your traffic through different servers at once, browsing can become slow and gear down your whole online experience. Further, since due to its free and anonymous network, criminals are also using it to carry out illegal transactions and activities. But nonetheless, it’s still a very useful tool for hiding your IP address and become anonymous on internet.

04 - Use Mobile Network – Slow and not encrypted

Another quick way to hide your IP address is by switching to your mobile network rather than your ISP. But this doesn’t guarantee you anonymous access to the web or allow you to unblock geo-restricted content, however, it’s an alternative way to perform certain activities like accessing a website that you cannot do because your ISP has restricted your access. You will be able to access your desired website and your IP will be different as well.

05 - Connect to Public Wi-Fi – Not Secure

You can also use Public Wi-FI networks in malls, coffee shops and hotels to get a different IP address. It’s an easy way to switch to a different IP address and access content that is usually restricted by your local ISP. But like mobile networks, public Wi-Fi are also unsafe and doesn’t offer any level of anonymity. Instead, Public Wi-Fi hotspots are considered the most vulnerable to cyberattack. So, it’s always better to take necessary precautions like using a VPN, but it’s still a way to change your IP address nonetheless.

06 - Call Your Internet Service Provider

Last but not the least, you can always ask your internet service provider to change your IP address. Basically, there are two types of IPs that an ISP assigns to users; Static and Dynamic. It’s difficult to change static IPs so most ISPs usually assign dynamic IPs to its users.

Hide Your IP Now

Hide your IP address with a VPN and defeat
IP monitoring and logging

To stay in business, ISPs will make sure to keep the government and other regulatory bodies pleased. Thus, to hope that logging policies will change and rule in your favor will go to waste. What you can turn to is the next best alternative, which is using a VPN to defeat IP monitoring and logging.

VPN encrypts all your activity making it browsing the web secure. Do not lightly let your personal information get away with public internet or leaky connections, get VPN to protect your data and identity.

VPN hides your location by changing your IP to another country, giving you access to sites efficiently, securely and anonymously from anywhere around the globe.

Send your internet traffic through FastestVPN so you can not only change your IP address but also protect your data from malicious internet users or hackers.

Get a VPN Now

Use VPN to change your IP address

VPN is a solution to all your worries. It protects your financial data, so you do not lose it to scamming fraudsters. VPN lets you bypass censorship and keeps all your activities private. These are all convincing reasons in favor of getting VPN.

FastestVPN gives you military-level security. Tech savvy individuals highly recommend VPN for reasons listed below:

Gives high-speed internet, irrespective of location
Shop safely without compromising your location
Protection again weak public networks
Transfer of files without leakages letting data get into hands of unauthorized hackers
Keep all personal details – financial, search history, video calls – wholly secure from third parties

Get a VPN Now

How to Hide your IP Right now

We have explained you the different ways to hide your IP but the best one in terms of overall online experience is definitely a through a VPN. So, if you have questions on how to use a VPN to hide my IP right now, then here is what you need to do:

Buy VPN

Visit FastestVPN and subscribe to a suitable plan

Download software on your device

Download and install FastestVPN app for compatible devices

Activate the VPN

Use your FastestVPN credentials to login to FastestVPN and hide your IP instantly.

Get a VPN Now

Should I use a VPN or proxy server to hide my IP?

While proxy and VPN both are a solution to similar problems, VPN is preferably recommended over proxy. This is because while proxy too lets you access geo-restricted content, it does not secure your internet activity which means you are still exposed. Proxy can only secure your web browser, whereas VPN secures 100% of your internet activity with encrypted tunneling. VPN replaces your local ISP for all applications whereas proxy only changes the DNS so that blocked content can be accessed. With a VPN covering you wholly and keeping all your activity anonymous, you can comfortably enjoy secure browsing regardless of your location.

VPN vs. Proxy	VPN	Proxy
Works With Phones and Tablets
Protect From Phishing Threats
Encrypts Your Activity
High-Speed Browsing
Regular Virtual Location Changes
Hides Your Location
Hides Your Identity from Hackers/Snoopers