Readers Respond: Ways to Hide IP Addresses for Anonymous Web Surfing

Responses: 30

By Bradley Mitchell, About.com Guide

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From the article: Ways You Can Hide Your Public IP Address

Numerous Internet proxy servers offer anonymous Web browsing capability. Accessing Web sites via these proxies hides your public IP address from Web servers, helping to protect your identity online. Anonymizing proxies often work as designed, but the approach suffers from some inherent technical limitations. As an alternative, some people install special programs on their computers that also can hide their IP address (and other identifying information) through the local software instead of relying on an external server. Do you use an anonymizing proxy and/or utility program to hide your IP? Which one(s)?
What Method Do You Use?

Tried http://hidemyipaddress.org/ but..

Tested in google.ru, but somehow it recognized me as a Swede (which I am). So is hidemyipaddress.org trustable? Hmmm.. Would be nice to hear what you others here think.

—Guest funky

IP Hider in Africa

Being from a North African country, most of the content online is restricted, so for a secure and anonymous browsing I usually use ipaddresshq.com.

—Guest mehdi2409

Hide My IP

I use Hide My IP 5.3 software to hide my IP address... . It does not affect my Internet speed.. that's the main reason I like it very much.

—janiman

Read reviews before buying

I use Hide My Ass, but it's always best to read reviews first... .

—Guest belle

Who can you trust?

You can never be totally anonymous online. If an infringement gets reported, the owners of the proxy will (by law) have to provide the original IP address at the time of the infringement. The website which act as a proxy also do as they say, but you'll find a lot of sites ban them access due to abuse. Also you never know who's running public proxies, software or website versions. Is it agencies collecting usage data? There's also VPN's which encrypt your traffic (as well as hide your ip) - meaning your ISP can't determine what it is you're downloading. It's good way of bypassing P2P throttling, etc and at the same time accessing things outside your country (BBC iPlayer/Hulu/Netflix etc) at nice speeds - which you definitely won't get with a public or web proxy. will have to comply with the law regardless of their views on it. They know better than to mess with the government.

—Guest various

Ghosting

I use Cyber Ghost VPN PPTP... . I have access to four servers in four countries including the U.S. It hides my IP and anonymizes all traffic. I only use it for torrents or to access banned content. I also use it via public Wi-Fi for added anonymity.

—Guest what

Not hiding everything

I paid for Easy-Hide-IP, and they do not hide your IP from bittorrent sites, but they don't tell you that when they take your money.

—oldmanme

One of the popular Web proxies

Use www.hidemyass.com for the best socks4/5, or http, or https proxies.

—Guest poop

VPN via USA servers

I'm an expat living in Singapore and I travel to China a lot. I mainly use the USA servers to watch TV and see my facebook account which is blocked over here. I had some problem connecting through the firewall of China but the support was really helpful and now it works well. It's not that fast in China as it is in Singapore, but at least I can get out without being blocked.From my limited experience, this is a really easy to use vpn and the support was great for me.

—Guest CIFeBxENtp

Hide IP is safe with encryption?

I think the way these IP address hiding sites work (or should work) is their software on your local machine encrypts your request to www.dodgy.com, then passes that encrypted request along to the IP hiding website (via your ISP of course). That way your ISP *cannot* see what site you are really visiting... The IP hiding website then decrypts the request, forwards it to www.dodgy.com, waits for the reply, encrypts that reply, sends it back to you via your ISP, then the software on your local machine decrypts the response and your browser renders the result...Your ISP only has access to encrypted requests and responses. Only the IP hiding website can see what is really going on... Any thoughts? Am I right? [A: Yes!]

—Guest Guesser

We all use an ISP - it has logs...

Always been confused, but surely, in the end, we all must connect to the Net via a service provider (ISP). Surely it has server logs, yes? Basically, what real 'hiding' functionality do any of the previous comments suggestions provide? Would not BigBrother (or any clever hacker?, or..) firstly start inspecting ISP logs?

—Guest WhatAboutTheISP

VPN is the best advice

I agree that VPN is the most reliable and safe solution to hide a real IP address. I use vpn-account.com to hide my IP, and it works fine.

—Guest Ann

MAC Address - Hide IP is Worthless

If someone wants you, they have you by tracing your MAC Address. The only way around this is to keep changing your network card. Hide IP is worthless!

—Guest Gregg

Gaming banned need new IP

I had my IP banned by a game I play (too many accounts). I need a way for that server to see a new IP for me to sign on and play now. What can do that? Ive tried the hidemyip trash and it doesn't change anything.

—TooManyDetails

Hide My IP - is trash

First the download FORCE installs the ask.com toolbar. The cancel button is disabled (they even brag about this...dump the set-up file and see for yourself). Ask.com tracks everything you do online and although the Hide my IP program is "marginally" effective at hiding ip addresses (this depends on the proxy server they route your connection through-not all are anonymous and few are screened=trouble because the proxy server sees ALL of your traffic that passes through it...think! They could be run by criminals or govt or bot net); plus the cookies that the toolbar saves during your browsing sessions are NOT encrypted and easily accessed. BTW those cookies have much more personal info than your ip. Passwords, credit card numbers, browsing history, and yes some have ip addresses. Pay for a reputable VPN service if you want legitimate anonymity; if your intentions are less than innocent, even a paid VPN subscription won't protect you.

—Guest Whistle Thrower