How to hide your IP address
Your IP address is the public identifier your internet connection hands to every website and service you touch, and it can reveal your rough location and who your provider is. If you want to keep sites from seeing it, the practical goal isn't to make your IP disappear — it's to route your traffic through an intermediary server, so the sites you visit see that server's address instead of yours.
Here are the real options, with honest trade-offs for each.
Use a VPN
A VPN (virtual private network) is the most common tool for this. It creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN provider's server, then sends all your traffic out from there. Websites see the VPN server's IP, and your provider can no longer see which specific sites you visit — only that you're connected to a VPN.
A VPN protects all traffic on your device, and it's usually the simplest option: install an app, pick a location, connect. The honest caveat is that you're not removing the middleman, you're changing who it is. Your VPN provider can see everything your ISP used to, so you're trusting them not to log or sell it. "No-logs" claims are hard to verify, free VPNs often monetize your data, and a VPN does nothing about cookies, logins, or how you behave once you're on a site.
Use a proxy server
A proxy is a lighter-weight relay. You typically configure it for a single app — most often a browser — and only that app's traffic is routed through it. It's handy for quickly changing the apparent IP of one program without touching the rest of your system.
The weakness is that many proxies don't encrypt your traffic, so your ISP (and anyone between you and the proxy) can still see what you're doing. Coverage is also partial: apps you didn't configure keep using your real IP. Treat a proxy as a convenience for changing your visible address, not as a privacy layer.
Use Tor
The Tor network offers the strongest anonymity of these options. It routes your traffic through several volunteer-run relays, each of which only knows the previous and next hop, so no single point sees both who you are and what you're doing. The easiest way in is the Tor Browser.
The trade-offs are real: it's noticeably slower because of the multiple hops, some sites block or challenge Tor traffic, and you have to resist logging into personal accounts, which would tie your identity back to the session. Tor is the right choice when strong anonymity genuinely matters — not for everyday streaming or browsing.
Situational options
You can also change your visible IP without any dedicated tool. Switching from home Wi‑Fi to mobile data gives you a different IP from your carrier, and vice versa. Public Wi‑Fi at a café or library changes your IP to that network's, but adds risk: you don't control the network, and others on it may try to snoop, so avoid sensitive logins there. Finally, many home connections use a dynamic IP that your ISP rotates periodically — sometimes a router reboot is enough to get a new one, though this only changes the number, not who can see your activity.
What hiding your IP does and doesn't do
Hiding your IP changes the address sites see and, with a VPN or Tor, hides your browsing from your ISP. That's genuinely useful, but it is not total anonymity. You can still be identified through cookies, anything you log into, and browser fingerprinting — the combination of your screen, fonts, and settings that many sites use to recognize you regardless of IP. And whoever runs your VPN, proxy, or Tor exit can still see traffic passing through them. It's also worth being clear that hiding your IP does not make illegal activity legal; it just changes one identifier. If you're curious what your address currently exposes, see what an IP address reveals.
How to check it worked
Verifying is quick. After you connect through a VPN, proxy, or Tor, reload the tool and check your IP. If the address and the location shown have changed from what you saw before, your traffic is now exiting through the intermediary. If your original IP still appears, the tool isn't active, only some apps are routed, or your setup is leaking — worth fixing before you rely on it.