In today’s world, keeping your privacy online has become a difficult thing. Everyone wants to know everything about you, all for different purposes. Facebook, Google and other tech giants want to know as many details about you, because they want to serve you advertising about things you’d like to see. That way, they can get more clients and earn more money through ad space.

Hackers are another group looking to steal as much data about you as possible. They can extort money from you through malware known as ransomware, or they could use your devices to increase the size and strength of their botnet. They could also sell your credit card and other data to third parties for profit.

The government is also interested in your data, for various reasons, one being to collect intelligence.

Pretty much, wherever you move online, someone wants to know who you are, where you live, who do you talk to, how much you earn, where you keep and how you spend your money. So obviously, it has become extremely important to stay as anonymous as possible online.

One way to do it is to hide your IP address by using a VPN. Let’s first examine what these two things are:

IP Address: The IP address is a series of numbers (example: 123.456.78.90) which is assigned to every device connected to the internet. It is something of an identification number for the device, allowing it to communicate with other devices. You can consider it as a street address in the city of ‘Internet’.

VPN: This is short for Virtual Private Network. It’s basically a set of servers, located all over the world, used by many people. By using those servers to connect to the internet, instead of going directly, you’re using that server’s IP address, essentially hiding your own. It is one of the most popular ways to hide an IP address, thus hiding your location and many other things people would like to remain hidden.

Why Should I Hide My IP Address?

Here are eight reasons why you should do it:

  • Hides your real location
  • Protects you from spying
  • Allows you to access IP-blocked content, such as YouTube geoblocked videos
  • Hides your search results from your ISP (Internet Service Provider)
  • Allows you to see censored content
  • Allows you to see blocked content (for example, Facebook at schools, etc.)
  • Allows you to use public Wi-Fi safely
  • Protects you from computer from malicious activity

As you can see, staying safe online is not an easy task, but is definitely something you should consider. There are plenty of good VPN services out there, with satisfied customers. For example, Vyprvpn customer reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Remember, whenever you go online, there will be people who’d want to trick you into giving too much information. Don’t open email attachments from people you don’t know, don’t visit suspicious websites, especially those asking for your payment information, and make sure to get a VPN service activated.