If you’re browsing this website, you have an IP address. But what is an IP address, and how does it affect your privacy? An IP address is a number, and it usually looks like this: 4 smaller numbers representing4 bytes of information, or 32 bits.
Devices need IP addresses to communicate with each other over a network, just like people need physical addresses to mail each other letters. On your home Wi-Fi network, for example, each device has a private IP address. This number is only unique within the private network. Routers tend to reuse the same numbers, so these numbers aren’t globally unique.
On the wider internet, however, each device has a public IP address, and that number is unique. Because it is unique to the whole internet, your public IP address is a very powerful tool for companies to gather information about you. For instance, websites can use your IP address to identify your geographical location, sometimes down to the neighborhood.
Marketers can also use your IP address to track your activity across the internet. They can see what you’re interested in, what you’re spending money on, and even make accurate predictions about what you’ll do in the future. Even worse, these companies can take the information tied to your IP address and sell it to other third parties, all without your consent.
Needless to say, many people choose to hide their IP addresses to protect their privacy, by connecting to the internet through a VPN service like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, SurfShark and IPVanish. These VPNs reroutes your traffic through a secure server with a different IP address in a location you choose.
Instead of your true IP address, websites and other third parties will see the IP address of the VPN server. That server is shared by thousands of other users, and it keeps no logs of any browsing activity. You can check what IP address you’re using by visiting TheVPNCoupon’s IP Address Checker.
Why Should I Protect My IP Address?
An IP address provides an identity to your networked device.
So what does it reveal about you?
Your IP address can show the country, region and city from which you connect to the Internet in real-time. Using IP address lookups anyone can get details such as your Internet service provider or hostname.
Why is that important?
Combining your online activity and IP location data allows snoopers to get a profile of who’s accessing the Internet from that specific IP address. Your Internet service provider can check and log your browsing history. It means authorities can get all personal details about any Internet user, including name, address, phone number, and credit card details, upon request.
Associating your IP address with your online activity provides advertisers with insights about your ad preferences so that brands can serve you highly targeted ads. They can also add your IP to a specific list that they use for IP-targeting.
When using a VPN, your IP address stays protected. VPN redirects your connection via a remote server run by the VPN provider, protecting your data from snoopers and cybercriminals.
Protecting Your Privacy Online
There is very little privacy on the Internet. All kinds of snoopers want to monitor and collect data about what you do online.
VPNs shield you from them. So you can browse in ultimate privacy.
How?
VPN sends your online traffic through a remote server within a worldwide network of secure VPN servers. This way, your real IP address is changed, and your online traffic is snoop-proof.
Some popular VPNs also keep no logs of your Internet activity along the way, so you can surf the web without leaving a trace. The Kill Switch assures that your private data will not be exposed, not even for a second, in case a VPN connection drops.
When you connect to VPN, your device will only use DNS servers operated entirely by the VPN provider, this way protecting you from DNS leaks.
The unique Onion Over VPN solution combines anonymizing powers of the Onion network and the extensive benefits of VPN for top-level privacy. So if you care about your sensitive data, I recommend you use VPNs like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, SurfShark, and IPVanish. They have everything to protect your privacy.
DNS (Domain Name System)
Is your DNS vulnerable? This post will also explain how exposed DNS requests put your privacy at risk.
But first, what is DNS?
When you think of the name of a website, you probably think of a URL, like google.com. But to computers, the true name of a website is an IP address, like 74.125.22… well, you get the idea. You probably can’t keep track of all these numbers, but your computer can. At least for websites you’ve visited before.
For every new website, your computer needs to ask for the right IP address through a complicated system called DNS, or Domain Name System. When you type in a new URL, your computer asks a DNS server to find a certain IP address.
The request is sent through a distributed hierarchy of servers, each of which may or may not be able to fill the request, often simply pointing the request in the right direction until the correct IP address is found and delivered back to your computer, all in less time than it takes you to blink.
Most Internet users are configured by default to use unencrypted DNS. Unfortunately, governments and other organizations sometimes don’t want you to see certain content, and intercepting your DNS requests is one of the easiest ways to deny you access.
Unencrypted DNS is also vulnerable to hacks that redirect you to websites designed to scam your DNS servers also tend to log information, like which websites you visit, when, and from where.
Some VPN providers don’t handle their own DNS, so even if your normal Internet traffic is protected, your DNS requests will still be vulnerable. And VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN runs its own DNS on every server. Because it never leaves the VPN tunnel,
These DNS is fast, leaves no identifiable information, and, best of all, all your DNS queries are signed and encrypted, so they’re protected from anyone seeing them, stopping them, or modifying them. So get the VPN with its own DNS.