The Internet has become an integral part of every person’s life in today’s era. Whatever you may need, the internet is a solution that’ll always be on your mind. But when you surf the web, does a question like “what’s my IP address?” ever come to your mind?

Well, you might want to scoff at that, obviously!

Who would ever think of knowing their IP address? How does it really matter even, right? Well, as a matter of fact, it does, and a lot!

These are basically digital addresses that are used for delivering content over the web. However, they tell a lot more about you, most importantly your name and geolocation. Moreover, there are times when you’d need to know your IP address, especially for some network communications. Knowing them comes in very handy when you’re dealing with some VoIP calls or other remote control software, and sometimes, looking for your IP address can let you know some crazy, shocking, and surprising thing.

But the question is, how could you know your IP address? Well, finding that is as simple as A.B.C.! Read on to know how you can find your IP address.

How You Can Find Your IP Address Easily?

Well, the easiest way is to look for it on your web browser. All you’d have to do is go to the Google search bar and type in the keyword “what’s my IP?” or “what is my IP address?”

As soon as you press enter, you’ll see your IP address right on the top of the search results. That was swift, right?

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not swift only for you. It’s that swift for anyone who’s ever connected with you over the web. And that’s what you must be more concerned about when thinking about your IP addresses. Why? Let’s understand everything step by step, and let’s begin by looking into how IP addresses work.

How Do IP Addresses Work?

IP addresses are basically provided by your internet services provider. What they provide is a public IP address, while your router connects your system and generates a private IP address.

Now, what happens is whoever you connect with over the web, be it people or websites, gets access to your IP address. Considering that IP addresses are more than just numbers separated by periods and reveal other information about you, anyone with that address can trace it back to your location using the geo location feature. It doesn’t matter when you connected with them or if you had any conversation or transaction or whatsoever. Someone has your IP address; that person can very well track you down for your exact geographical location.

But why would anyone want to know where you’re at? Is this “anyone can find my geographical location by tracking my IP address” really a matter to worry about? Or is it something just too hyped?

Why Would Someone Track an IP Address?

Surely, you may think who’d track your IP address. It’s not that you’re very famous or going to become a celebrity or something, and people are going to be crazy about knowing your whereabouts. And over the top of it, they’d just go ahead and track your IP address! 

But, life’s unpredictable. There could be anyone keeping an eye on your IP address. It could be a stalker, investigator, hacker, even a criminal, for that matter.

In fact, many cyber law cases are based on finding criminals by tracking down their IP addresses. Moreover, any illegal activity done online is easily traceable by tracing back to the IP address and looking through the records of internet services providers.

Now, surely you’re not doing any criminal or illegal activities online (at least I’d like to see it that way!). However, knowing for a fact that anyone could track you down, turn up right at your door just by using your IP address doesn’t really feel safe, does it?

Are you planning on quitting using the internet now? Well, wait there! You really don’t have to do that at all. A better way is searching out things like “how can I hide my IP address?”

Now, you’d wonder if you could do that. Well, to put it straight, yes, you can! Let me tell you how!

How to Hide Your IP Address?

Well, hiding an IP address is not something you could do in particular. But what you can do is relocate. That means the IP address that anyone would try to track down will send them to a location that’s nowhere close to you.

Here’s how you can do that.

Use Internet Somewhere That’s Not Very Close to Your Home

Well, that may not be very feasible. But it helps. When you use the internet from a different location, the IP address is different. So, even if someone tries to track you down later, you’d not be in that location. This way, you can help yourself hide your actual geographical location from being tracked through your IP address.

Use Proxy Address

That’s a very old way of preventing your real IP address from getting down to anybody’s system for being tracked. When you set up a proxy, your real address is hidden, and what shows is some other fake address. However, the only issue with this is that you may not be able to access sites when using proxy as sites block them.

Use VPN

Virtual Private Networks are the safest way to use the internet. They won’t show your IP address; they won’t save your search history; they just will keep you masked and safe from any cyber security threats. So, there’s your best way to hide your IP address.

Final Words

Finding your own IP address is as easy and swift as typing in “What’s my IP address?” in your Google search bar. While knowing it could be beneficial for you, someone else knowing it can cause you some serious troubles. So, you want to keep it hidden.

I hope this article has helped you understand everything and you’re surfing safe!