Your IP address is an important piece of information exchanged with every interaction of your devices connected to a network.
Similar to your current residential address, an IP address helps identify devices connected to the internet, including your computers, smartphones, and servers.
Starting from the website you visit or the streaming service you use, everything collects your IP address to make things work. Even though having one is vital, should you reveal your original IP address? Is there a reason to hide it? Let's go into further depth and find out.
Here's Why You Should Hide Your IP Address
Note that not everyone needs to hide their IP addresses, but if you think that some of the reasons mentioned below warrant a use-case for yourself, you can try!
1. Prevent Websites From Tracking You
No matter what website you load up, everyone tracks or collects your IP address in one way or the other.
In numerous instances, the website does not directly collect your data, but some of the services they use could collect your IP address.
For a modern website with numerous functionalities, there are a variety of trackers enforced to help them analyze their visitors. Of course, this is not necessarily a process to collect your data and sell them to third parties; it may help them improve the user experience on their site by referring to the statistics.
But, if you do not want to reveal your IP address with a website, you should hide it.
Technically, you will need some privacy-focused browser extensions, private browsers, and other tools to minimize tracking ultimately. But, hiding your IP address is one of the most straightforward techniques to enhance your privacy.
As a result, you will not be giving away your country or location information to websites when you mask the IP address.
2. Unlock Access to Content
Many web services enforce geo-blocking that limits IPs from a list of countries. In their defense, it saves their resources and bandwidth.
However, if you still want access to restricted content, you can hide your IP address and use a fake IP to bypass the block.
In either case, it should come in handy if you are traveling abroad but still want access to geo-blocked content—such as different Netflix series.
3. Prevent Digital Marketers From Profiling You
It is worth noting that hiding the IP address will not prevent marketers from tracking you. Several methods include email tracking, short links, surveys, and advertisements that help digital marketers know what you like/what you do not.
However, hiding your IP address makes it difficult to create a complete profile of your preferences.
If you do not use a fake IP address, they can easily correlate all the data associated with your IP address while improving their demographic's statistics.
4. Go Full Incognito
The private browsing or incognito mode in a browser helps you surf the web without worrying about clearing the cookies, history, and basic tracking.
However, you still give away your IP address if you haven’t masked it. In other words, your browsing activity is not truly private, and your IP address links back to you for the browsing activities in the incognito mode.
So, with the IP address hidden, you get enhanced privacy.
5. Get Around Government Restrictions
If a service or website is banned/restricted from your country, you can easily unblock it by hiding your IP address.
It is similar to bypassing geo-blocking but limited to a single country. You can always use a VPN to hide your actual IP address and access the restricted website.
6. Bypass Network Firewalls
If you are browsing the web at your workplace, library, or school, there can be some network restrictions based on IP addresses.
But, you may end up circumventing the firewall using a fake IP address. Note that there can be a variety of complex firewalls, and it may not be as simple to bypass every firewall.
7. Prevent Your Internet Service Provider From Tracking You
If you do not take any special measures, your internet service provider (ISP) will keep track of your web browsing activity. Of course, not all providers will spy on you. But if you do not trust your ISP, it is always a good idea to hide your browsing activity from them.
While you can take the help of DNS-over-HTTPS to enhance privacy, many IP masking techniques (like a VPN) should also help.
8. Prevent Search Engine Tracking
Unless you stick to some private search engine alternatives, Google, Bing, and many others usually collect your IP address to associate the search data and the activity with it.
They may push personalized advertisements based on your IP address as well.
So, if you want a private search experience and do not want to see personalized results or advertisements, hiding your IP address is a good solution.
9. Prevent Location Tracking
Whether you restrict apps from using your location information or have it disabled in your operating system, your IP address gives away your approximate location.
The location may not be entirely accurate, but it is pretty close in several cases.
So, if you want to keep your location private, using a fake IP while hiding the original seems to get the job done.
10. Hiding Your IP Address Promotes the Right to Privacy
You do not have to engage in anything illegal to warrant hiding your IP address. Taking back control of your privacy is necessary as we rely more on online services.
We should not give away every piece of vital information. So, hiding an IP address could be a good starting point to limit the data we share. Unless you want a service to provide a personalized experience, you should always prefer to hide your IP address.
Hide Your IP Address When Needed
There can be times when you do not need to hide your original IP address; suppose you want to access a login web page restricted to a static IP or an IP range.
Unless you have such a use case, you may want to consider hiding your IP address.