Learning how to hide your IP address is one of the best ways to protect yourself while surfing cyber space. However, this can be accomplished a couple of different ways, but only accomplished safely through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Using a proxy service or similar service can still make your personal data available to others. A VPN prevents any infiltration of your connection, no matter what type of hacking or blocking software being used.
How a VPN Can Hide Your IP Address
A VPN can hide your IP by simply granting you another one from a different server. The provider makes a connection between their equipment and your equipment, then encrypts any data sent over that secured line. Imagine a side road going around a main road, this is essentially what a VPN provider offers, but instead of being an open road, it is a tunnel surrounded on all sides by scrambling software.
Since this line is protected by the technology used by a VPN, you enter back onto the main road, or worldwide web, through its server location. If you choose to use a VPN’s server in another country, anyone tracking you will see an IP from that country and not your current IP.
The VPN blocks anyone from tracking you back to your IP and this is how it hides your IP address. You can even have the VPN change your IP on a periodic basis and this way anyone that attempts to track you see different IP addresses anytime you enter the cyber world or even changes that IP every few minutes. Again, this hides your current IP from anyone wanting to observe your Internet work.
Other VPN Benefits Besides Hiding Your IP Address
Besides changing your IP and hiding your location, a VPN offers many other benefits. These benefits can improve your connection speed, get you around government censoring applications and grant you access to SEO sites that are only available in a particular country.
The better VPN services have bandwidth sizes that exceed what you may require, but most of the free VPN services only offer limited bandwidth. While free VPN services can still hide your IP, they will limit the speed you can download movies or access webpages, as well as upload your personal videos to a social media site.
Since the VPN offers you a different avenue when entering the Internet, any government censoring applications that limit access to the worldwide web is penetrated and bypassed. You can easily go around any blocking software these restricting governments may impose.
The VPN can also grant you an IP from another country. This feature makes websites available that would only be available if lived in that particular country. For example, if you travel outside the UK and want access to BBC iPlayer to watch its programs, then you can switch your current IP to one that is available in the UK, then get access to BBC iPlayer and everything it offers.
While many VPN providers are available, only the better ones offer all of these features. After a thorough study of all the VPN services available, we compiled a list of five of the best and reasonably priced VPN services. Here is what our specialists recommend and links to the VPN websites.
| Rank | Provider Name | Starting Price | Money Back Guarantee |
Visit Provider Site |
| 1 |  |
$6.67/ Month | 30 Days |  |
| 2 |  |
$11.52/ Month | 30 Days | |
| 3 |  |
$14.95/Month | 7 Days | |
| 4 |  |
$10.00/ Month | 7 Days | |
| 5 |  |
$21/ 3 Months | 7 Days | |
