How to hide your IP address: the methods, and their limits
Hiding your IP address is easy. Understanding what that actually protects is much harder, and it is where most articles stop.
What your IP address reveals, and what it does not
Before hiding it, it helps to know what you are hiding. Your public IP address points to your internet provider and a rough region, often no finer than a metropolitan area and sometimes wrong by hundreds of kilometres. It contains no name, no street address and no phone number.
A link between an address and a subscriber does exist, but only your provider holds it, and only discloses it under a court order. A stranger who learns your IP address therefore learns almost nothing usable against you.
What it does do is act as a stable identifier for advertising, decide which streaming catalogue you see, and let a site know that several visits come from the same household. Those reasons, rather than any fear of being "located", are why people hide it.
The four methods
A VPN
Your traffic travels encrypted to a server run by the VPN operator, which forwards it on. Websites see that server's address. It is the most practical method: it covers the whole device, needs no per-application setup, and speed stays usable.
The part comparison sites rarely mention: you do not remove trust, you move it. Your provider no longer sees where you go, but the VPN operator sees everything. You trade an intermediary bound by local law, identifiable and regulated, for a company often registered abroad whose claims you cannot verify. A "no-logs policy" is a commercial promise, not a technical guarantee.
A proxy
Same principle, lighter, and without systematic encryption. An HTTP proxy covers only the browser, sometimes only one tab. It is enough to get around a harmless geographic block; it protects nothing else. Avoid free public proxies: many exist precisely to watch the traffic passing through them.
Tor
Your traffic crosses three relays in sequence, each knowing only the previous and the next one. No single link sees both who you are and where you are going, which makes it the strongest option against correlation. The cost is speed, and the fact that many sites block known exit addresses.
Changing network
The simplest method is often forgotten: tethering through your phone immediately gives you your mobile operator's address. Restarting your router sometimes works too, since most home connections use dynamic addresses. This is not anonymity, but it answers a one-off need.
Comparison
| Method | Scope | Speed | Who you trust |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPN | Whole device | Good | The VPN operator |
| Proxy | The browser | Varies | The proxy operator |
| Tor | The Tor browser | Slow | No single party |
| Mobile network | Whole device | Good | Your mobile operator |
What none of these methods hides
This is the most important part, and the most often left out. Changing your IP address does not make you anonymous, because the IP address is only one identifier among many.
- Your accounts. If you are signed in to a service, it knows who you are, whatever address you arrive from.
- Cookies. They survive an address change and keep tying you to your earlier visits.
- Browser fingerprinting. Your combination of fonts, resolution, time zone and extensions is often unique. It follows you from one address to the next.
- Technical leaks. WebRTC can expose your local addresses, and your DNS queries may still go through your provider even with a VPN running.
Checking that it works
Once your VPN or proxy is on, three checks are worth the time. Come back to the home page: the address shown should be the service's, and the "Provider" field should no longer name your usual operator.
Then open the "What your browser reveals as well" section. The "WebRTC leak" line should say no local address is exposed; otherwise your real address stays visible to websites despite the VPN. Finally, check in your VPN settings that DNS leak protection is enabled.
In short
If your goal is to get around a geographic restriction or to stop a site tracking you by address, a serious VPN does the job. If your goal is real anonymity against a determined adversary, your IP address is the least of your problems, and Tor with strict discipline is the only serious answer. In between, phone tethering settles many one-off situations with no subscription and nothing to install.