Benefits of Protecting Your IP Address

Posted on Dec 14, 2018 by Summer Hirst
IP addresses

What is an IP address?

I’m sure you’ve heard of IP (Internet Protocol) Address. It’s the little sequence of numbers that is essentially your computers “address” on the internet. Your IP address can be viewed by the websites you visit. It lets the site manager see where the traffic is coming from. It also helps them understand your interaction with them and your online behavior.

Why you should hide your IP address

When you hide your IP, it gets difficult for someone to track you online and can help you remain anonymous. Here are some other benefits of protecting your IP address:

Access geo-blocked websites

Many people hide their IP to access websites such as Hulu and Netflix that can be accessed from certain countries only. While Netflix is available in most countries, not everyone can access the complete Netflix library. Due to copyright distribution laws, most countries get only a certain part of the entire collection. If you change your IP address to one in the UK, you can view and watch their UK library of TV shows and movies. To see how much Netflix content each country has, go to this website and hover over a country on the map.

Travel cheaper

Travel websites display ticket prices based on the country from where you are booking. If you’re traveling from the US to Mexico, you might find a cheaper deal if you book from Mexico. You can use a VPN to hide behind a Mexican IP and book tickets. To learn more read “How to get cheaper flights by using a VPN” by Jayson Quayle.

A VPN can help you in other ways too. If you’re planning a trip and are constantly checking for airfares, the travel website will raise the prices to create a sense of urgency.

If you delete the cookies and use another IP, the website will not get to know that you’ve visited before, so it will show you the normal prices.

Hide your location

If for any reason, you don’t want a particular website to know about your real location, you can use a VPN. VPN providers generally have large networks of servers and you can connect to any of them to hide behind their IP.

There are many reasons to hide your location details from a website. Several websites harvest your data to send you targeted ads. If you want marketers to be off your trail, you can hide your IP address from them.

Getting location specific results

If you access Google from your real location, you’ll get local results. If you need results from another country, you can connect to that particular server and perform a search. This way, you’ll get results for that country.

A VPN will hide your IP address. And not just that – it will also encrypt your data so that it stays safe as it travels over the internet.