In today’s digital world, everyone online is hunting for ways to intrude into your personal online space. Therefore, it’s inevitable to block all snoopers by hiding your IP address.
Of course, as an independent and free internet user, you deserve the right to digital privacy. But those web trackers, hackers, and often governments won’t let you do that easily.
So, if you love staying anonymous online or accessing geo-blocked sites, learn how to keep your IP address anonymous through this guide.
But before discussing how to hide your IP address, let’s get some basics out of the way.
Quick guide to hiding IP address online
While you can use several means to mask your IP, you might be in a rush to read them all. So, here we quickly explain the most effective way for it – using a VPN.
- Subscribe to a robust VPN service provider. Ideally, choose a top-notch premium VPN service to get the best security features. NordVPN is our no. 1 recommendation.
- Download the VPN client for your device. You can also use the VPN’s browser extension for added privacy (if available).
- Install the app. Usually, it takes only a few clicks to set up the VPN.
- Connect to a VPN server. You can browse the list of servers available and choose the one from your desired with the best speeds.
- Start browsing safely. As a precaution, consider clearing your device or browser cache after connecting the VPN so that it can better hide your real IP address.
What’s an IP Address?
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical identifier for a device connected to a network. This includes all devices, including your computers, smartphones, smart home devices, and other IoT appliances.
Through this identifier, the other devices and/or the server on the network identify a specific device to transmit data to. In this way, the IP address serves identification purposes and becomes the location address for the network.
What is my device IP?
Generally, your device holds two different types of IP addresses depending on how it communicates online and offline. These include a private IP and a public IP.
A private IP address is unique to a device within the network. This private IP serves as the basis for offline communications and hence, remains private. Despite being unique within a network, it may repeat for another device in another network. However, that won’t be a problem since the two networks would seldom communicate.
But if the networks ever communicate, it is almost always via the internet. So that’s where the second type of IP address plays its role – the public IP address.
Public IP addresses are unique for every device online. These IP addresses let the devices and the web servers communicate with each other over the internet. While they are unique, they may be shared by different devices within the same private network for online communication.
For your device, the private IP address is the one that your router has assigned to it. You can log in to your router’s admin panel and find out the private IP addresses of all devices (including your computers, smartphones, and others) connected to it. You will notice that this IP address is unique for every device.
In contrast, you can search for “what is my IP” on Google or any other search engine to check your public IP address. Or, you can use this IP checker tool to find your public IP address. This IP address is the one that your ISP has assigned to your network. And so all devices connected to your network (set up by your router) will share the same public IP address.
Since your private IP remains invisible online, you don’t have to worry about securing it. Instead, the IP address you must hide is the public IP, securing which automatically protects your network.
Different types of IP addresses
An IP address can either be static or dynamic.