How to Hide Your IP Address: 4 Methods Compared

Your IP address is like your home address on the internet: every site you visit can see it. It reveals your approximate location, identifies your internet provider, and lets advertisers connect your activity across unrelated sites. The good news: hiding it is simple, legal, and there's more than one way to do it. Here's how the four main methods compare.

What your IP address reveals about you

Before the methods, it's worth knowing what's at stake. Whenever you open a site or app, it sees your IP. With that number alone, it's possible to learn:

• Your approximate location — usually your city or region. Not your street address, but enough to target ads and content.
• Your internet provider — the company behind your connection.
• A tracking identifier — advertisers and data brokers use your IP as one of the pieces that link your browsing across sites that have nothing to do with each other.

On its own, an IP doesn't hand over your name. Combined with cookies and other tracking techniques, though, it helps build a detailed picture of your habits.

Method 1: VPN — the practical choice

A VPN (virtual private network) routes all of your device's traffic through an intermediary server, inside an encrypted tunnel. The sites you visit see the VPN server's IP instead of yours. New to the concept? Our plain-English guide to VPNs covers it from zero.

Pros:

• Hides your IP for every app and site on the device at once.
• Beyond hiding the IP, it encrypts your entire connection — real protection on public Wi-Fi.
• Fast enough for everyday use, including video.
• Simple: one tap to connect, nothing to configure.

Cons:

• You have to trust the VPN provider — pick one with a clear no-logs policy.
• Good services cost money, and free VPNs tend to pay for themselves with your data.

In practice, with Impact Shield VPN it comes down to three steps: install the app from Google Play, tap connect, done — your real IP is hidden and your connection encrypted.

Method 2: Proxy — swaps the IP, doesn't protect you

A proxy server also sits between you and the site, replacing your IP with its own. The crucial difference: most proxies don't encrypt your traffic.

Pros:

• Often free, nothing to install.
• Fine for one-off tasks in a single app or browser.

Cons:

• No encryption: your provider and anyone on your network can still see your traffic.
• Covers only the app you configure, not the whole device.
• Free proxies are notorious for logging and reselling browsing data.

Method 3: Tor — maximum anonymity, minimum speed

Tor routes your traffic through three volunteer-run servers with layered encryption. It's the tool of choice for journalists and activists who need strong anonymity.

Pros:

• The highest standard of anonymity available to the public.
• Free and open source.

Cons:

• Slow — impractical for video, downloads, and everyday use.
• Works well only inside the Tor browser.
• Many sites block or challenge traffic coming from the Tor network.

Method 4: Switching networks — changes the IP, doesn't hide it

Turning off Wi-Fi and using mobile data (or restarting your router) usually gets you a different IP. But that only swaps one visible IP for another — the new one still identifies you and your provider.

Useful for getting around a one-off IP block; useless for privacy.

Quick comparison

Method	Hides your IP	Encrypts	Speed	Covers the whole device
VPN	Yes	Yes	High	Yes
Proxy	Yes	No	Medium	No
Tor	Yes	Yes	Low	No
Switching networks	No (just changes it)	No	High	—

What hiding your IP doesn't do

Worth being honest about the limits. Hiding your IP doesn't make you invisible:

• Logins identify you. If you sign in to your Google or Instagram account, the platform knows who you are — regardless of your IP.
• Cookies keep working. Cookie-based tracking doesn't depend on your IP address.
• Scams are still scams. No privacy tool stops you from clicking a malicious link.

Hiding your IP is one important layer of privacy — not the whole wall.

How to check it worked

Simple: search "what is my IP" before and after connecting to the VPN. If the address (and the location tied to it) changed, your real IP is hidden.

The short version

For most people, a VPN is the method that makes sense: it hides the IP for the whole device, encrypts the entire connection, and doesn't get in the way of daily use. A proxy suits quick tasks without sensitive data, Tor suits those who need maximum anonymity and accept the speed cost, and switching networks merely changes the number — no real privacy gained.