How to hide my IP address

Protect your online identity with NordVPN.

Hiding your IP with a VPN

The safest and fastest way to hide your IP and replace it with a new one is by using a VPN. A reputable provider will not only give you a new IP address but also encrypt all the data you send and receive. Besides, connecting through a VPN will slow your internet connection significantly less than other methods.

The best part? It’s as easy as 1-2-3:

Download the app

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Connect!

Different ways to hide your IP

Tor

Tor is a free browser that encrypts your internet traffic and reroutes it through a few random nodes before connecting to the website you want. This process hides your real IP. Every time you visit a new website, you go through different nodes, making it difficult to track your actions online.

While Tor is a free tool that will hide your IP, it has some issues. It’s unstable, slow, and because it’s often associated with criminal activities, some websites block connections coming through Tor.

Proxies

Proxies are similar to VPNs in that they are the middleman between you and the internet. You get the IP address of the proxy server you connect through, but your traffic is not encrypted, there’s no authentication, and your internet connection is significantly slowed down. It’s not the best tool if you’re looking for privacy, but it will hide your real IP.

Using public Wi-Fi

Connecting to any network that’s other than your home Wi-Fi will temporarily change your IP. However, public Wi-Fi hotspots don’t offer any encryption, are easy to spoof, and often suffer from Man-in-the-middle attacks. So it’s best to avoid connecting to one if you can.

4 reasons to mask your IP address

You might wonder why you need to hide your IP address in the first place. Here are the main reasons to do it:

Hiding your location

If you don’t want online services and random people to know where you live, hiding your IP will do the trick.

Free internet

Avoid censorship and surveillance. A new IP in another country will help you bypass censorship and restrictions.

Better online experience

From streaming to gaming: if your ISP doesn’t know where you go online, it can’t throttle your bandwidth.

Online privacy

Whether it’s your ISP, network administrator, or marketers — no one should know which websites you visit or what information you search for.

Frequently asked questions

Is my IP hidden?

To check whether your IP is hidden, visit our What is my IP page. See if the IP address at the top of the page matches your real one. If it does – your IP is not hidden, and you should try changing it some other way.

Is hiding your IP address illegal?

Hiding your IP address is legal. However, VPNs, proxies, and other methods of changing your IP might be illegal in some countries. Therefore, if you suspect that you might get in trouble for using them, do your research beforehand.

Does a VPN change your IP?

Yes. A VPN routes your internet traffic through a remote server. The websites you visit and online services you use only see the IP address of the VPN server.

The more servers a VPN service has, the more IPs you can choose from. In addition, you change your virtual location to that of the country you connect to.

What happens when you hide your IP address?

Let’s say you used a VPN to hide your online activity and IP address (which indicates your location). This is done by encrypting your traffic, routing it through a secure remote server, and assigning you the server’s IP address.

In practice, when you hide your IP address:

1) Your ISP can’t see what’s in your data, where it’s ultimately going, and where it’s coming back from — in short, it doesn’t know what you’re doing;
2) If someone intercepts your data, it reads like gibberish;
3) The site you’re visiting doesn’t know your real location and lets you safely access local content.

What does a VPN hide?

VPN hides not only your IP but your physical location, too. A VPN will also keep your online activity hidden, so anyone trying to spy on your search history or traffic will come up empty.

If a hacker were to try and find you, all they’ll see is the IP address and physical location of the server you chose to connect to.

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