Does a VPN hide your IP address?
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These days, your IP address is just as important as your mobile phone number or your street address. It’s a digital identifier that provides ISPs, law enforcement agencies and – possibly – criminals with information about your location. They can use IP data to track your online activity and in some cases steal your identity to carry out phishing attacks.
Because of these reasons, many people seek to hide their identity when downloading music or streaming movies. And VPNs are a common way to do this. But not everyone understands how VPNs use IP addresses, and they can’t answer the question “Does a VPN hide your IP address?”
The truth is more complicated than you might think, especially if you take marketing content from VPNs at face value. This blog will look in more detail at what VPNs say, and how well IP addresses are hidden online.
What is the relationship between VPNs and IP addresses?
First, when answering the question “Does a VPN hide IP information?” , it is best to agree on a working definition of an “IP address”. IP stands for “Internet Protocol,” and an address is a string of numbers that protocols use to communicate with other devices on the network.
Each public IP address is unique, and the most common type of IP consists of four numbers ranging from 1 to 255. They are divided into five “categories”, which can be identified from the first number, and they use “subnet masks” to determine which devices can communicate to each other.
Most IP addresses on the web are IPv4, although this standard will likely fall back when we reach IPv4 saturation, leading to widespread adoption of the IPv6 format. In other words, at some point there won’t be enough IPv4 addresses to navigate. However, at the moment we can talk about IP addresses using IPv4 as a standard.
VPNs mask the identities of their users by giving them new IP addresses. When you connect to a VPN server, the VPN will allocate a completely different IP address, which corresponds to a specific geographic location. So you may choose a server in Hamburg and thus appear to the destination server as a user from Germany.
You can see this in action if you use a VPN. Before logging in to your client, use a tool like this IP checker and make a note of the IP address listed. After loading your VPN client and routing your traffic through a remote server, go back to the IP Checker. You should see a completely different set of numbers – an indication that the VPN is doing what it promised – giving you a whole new online personality.
However, don’t be too impressed by this magic trick. It’s the least good VPNs can do to protect your identity, and it’s certainly not the whole story. If so, we don’t need to ask is the VPN hiding your IP address. Of course the answer would be yes. But sometimes this is not the case, and privacy-conscious internet users need to be aware of this.
Does a VPN completely hide IP address details?
One problem when answering “Does a VPN hide IP address data?” related to perspective. For example, when you are assigned a new IP address and a new identity on the other side of the world, government agencies in your country will almost certainly struggle to find out who you are. But what about your VPN? Can you count on them not to peek at your IP information?
Your VPN can access your new IP address (and your old one), so they can technically track your online activity and see the sites you visit, the movies you stream, the files you torrent, not to mention your payment details. If you’ve taken the trouble to evade the look of your ISP or country, why trust a VPN?
Some VPNs are known to keep logs of user activity and there have been cases where data has been sold to marketers or handed over to authorities. These companies tend to be low-quality VPNs, and are often providers that specialize in free VPN services. So be very wary of great deals when downloading the client. In the world of VPNs, you often get what you pay for. Most importantly, always read the privacy policy – some VPNs offer a strict no-logs policy, which is exactly what you want.
Why is it necessary to find the right VPN provider
In the end, the question is not necessarily that the VPN hides IP details, but whether you trust that your VPN does not provide information to people you do not want access to your personal data.
This makes it really important to choose a reliable VPN provider that will not keep logs. Or, if you prefer a particular company that is open about their record-keeping practices, limit your internet use to a low-risk activity.
Fortunately, there are plenty of excellent review sites with customer reviews, and the tech press covers security issues with VPNs quite well. So stay tuned and do some research before committing to any particular provider.
We’ve talked about how VPNs can see your IP address so far, but there’s one more thing to touch on before we finish: IP address leaks. Poorly managed VPNs are notorious for leaking IP address details. And some VPN clients have not yet filled the gaps associated with web browsers and smartphone usage. In these cases, your VPN protection is essentially removed. You may not be able to get around geo-blocking measures, and your IP address is there for all to see. So always check that the VPN you choose has a good track record regarding IP leaks.
In general, there is no reason to avoid VPNs. Users just need to find a reliable and reputable provider. In this way, you can protect your IP address from outside agencies and use the web safely. Even if there is no such thing as 100% anonymity, you can use VPNs to get a lot closer.
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