Why do people want to hide their IP address?

You don’t need to be a criminal to want to hide your IP address. It’s actually a very clever thing to do.

Every time you go online, open social media or use Google, you leave a digital trace behind you because your IP address is like your digital fingerprint. It’s unique to you. And the digital trace it leaves has value to corporations, authorities, and individuals who might want to profit from it.

After just 10 minutes of browsing, you have released a huge amount of information into the world. Many of the sites you visit log IP addresses, effectively spying on you, usually to deliver you more personalized ads, which of course get you to spend more money. They often also sell the record of your browsing behavior to other third parties. Every bit of data that you’ve given away in the past has value - that’s the money going out of your pocket to corporations and third parties you don’t even know are taking it.

The great data giveaway

We have become used to giving away personal information, and a lot of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it. Yes - we get warned about cookies, but just by having the weather app activated on your phone, Apple or Android know your exact location at all times. So do you actually have control over what’s being done with your information?

It can feel like the internet knows that you’re renovating your kitchen, planning a trip with your friends, or looking to buy new trainers. Shops can even know you’re pregnant before your own family members do.

If you have a cycle tracking app on your phone, the app can then sell that information to businesses that will then target you with ads about babies. But only of course if you forget to tell the app every time you get your period. If you have regular periods they’ll sell your info to someone who wants to offer you tampons. You get the idea.

So many standard household products come with an app now. Purifying fans, dishwashers, washing machines, and so on. How do you know they’re not selling your usage information to others, to target ads to you?

We would never go into a bar and shout out our age, address, recent purchases, and certainly not our entire browser history. Who hasn't asked an embarrassing question to Google? Isn’t that why you ask Google? When you don’t want to tell anyone else?

Keep your valuable data and protect your anonymity

Your personal information is worth a lot of money to businesses that gather personal data on people. They can use it to target ads and political agendas based on your browsing behavior.

This can lead to the misuse of your personal information.

On top of that, if you live in a country where privacy is truly important and preserving your anonymity can mean the difference between life and death, what could be more important than hiding your IP address?

VPNs give you a way to be sure that your identity and your data are safely preserved.

How does it work?

When you connect to the internet using a VPN, you connect to one of the VPN provider’s servers instead of one which your Internet Service Provider chooses for you.

This effectively means that your IP address becomes the server’s IP address. A server that is simultaneously being accessed by possibly thousands of other internet users - which makes your true location impossible to track. Your IP will appear to be the same as thousands of other people’s.

That means that your anonymity is preserved. It also gives you information secure, private road to its destination, meaning no one can intercept it or view your activity whilst online. Ultimately, that means no more personalized adverts and your data staying where it should be. With you.

By using a VPN you put an end to the days of your information being sold on by countless corporations and third parties who want to make a profit from it, and you take control of your life online once again.