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Friday, March 29 2024
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How to Hide Your IP on Android

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Your IP address tells the world a lot about you – what country and city you are from, who your ISP is, what your ZIP code is. If you care about your online privacy, you might not want your IP address to be available to everyone.

So you decide to hide it. Great idea, but how do you do that – especially on Android?

Keep reading because we’ll show you how to hide your IP on Android in this article. Based on our tests, these are the three best ways to do that:

1. Use a VPN

VPNs are online services that hide your IP address. They do that by routing your traffic through a VPN server. Basically, instead of your connection going directly to the web, it takes this path:

Android Device → ISP Network → VPN Server → Internet

You communicate with the web through the VPN server, so all your outbound and inbound traffic go through it. Due to that, any website you connect to will only see the VPN’s IP address. Your Android device’s IP remains hidden.

VPNs also encrypt your traffic, which just means they make it unreadable. Nobody can spy on it to see what sites you browse. Hackers can’t even abuse unsecured public WiFi or fake hotspots to steal your login credentials or credit card numbers.

Overall, VPNs are great tools, but it’s hard finding a good one. There are hundreds of VPN services on the market. However, we can help you find reliable, fast, and secure Android VPNs. Just follow that link. It’ll take you to a ProPrivacy guide (a popular VPN review site) that ranks the best VPNs for Android.

2. Use a Proxy

Just like VPNs, proxies hide your IP by sending your traffic through a server that sits between you and the sites you browse. So to hide your IP on Android, you just need to connect to a proxy server before surfing the web.

Proxies are just as good at VPNs when it comes to hiding your IP. However, they don’t offer good encryption (or any at all). So if you want to also secure your traffic, you should use a VPN instead.

On the plus side, proxies will sometimes be faster than VPNs (due to the weak or nonexistent encryption). Proxies can also deliver faster load times by retrieving content that’s saved on their local cache instead. Essentially, they don’t need to forward requests to the Internet anymore.

3. Use Tor

Tor is a privacy network that sends your traffic through multiple servers before it reaches the Internet. It hides your IP behind at least three servers. The only IP websites see is the address of the last Tor server your traffic goes through. Tor also encrypts your traffic at least three times, which is an excellent security measure.

The good news is that Tor is free to use, so you don’t need to pay for a subscription. The bad news is that Tor is extremely slow. On average, we get 2-3 Mbps when using it, and our original speeds are around 90-100 Mbps. For reference, when we use VPN and proxy servers, we get around 50-70 Mbps.

The huge slowdown is due to the following factors:

  • The multiple layers of encryption. It makes the data packets very heavy, so they take longer to reach their destination. 
  • The limited number of servers. At the moment, there are only a little over 6,000 Tor servers. But there are over two million people using this network. So there’s hardly enough bandwidth to go around.

IP leaks are also a problem with Tor. The TorMoil flaw revealed Tor users’ real IPs. Also, opening files that bypass proxy settings (like PDFs) while using Tor can lead to IP leaks.

The safest way to use Tor is to connect to a proxy or VPN server beforehand. But then your speeds will be even slower. So only use it if you really don’t want to pay for a proxy or VPN (no, free proxies and VPNs aren’t safe because they can leak your IP).

Can You Hide Your IP By Switching Networks?

No, this is a common misconception. When you switch networks (like going from WiFi to mobile data), you change your IP address. You don’t hide it.

Changing your IP doesn’t mean it’s invisible. The websites you browse can still see it when you connect to them. To hide it, use a VPN, proxy, or Tor.

Can You Hide Your IP with a Smart DNS?

No, you can’t. A Smart DNS helps you bypass geo-blocks by hiding your location. However, it doesn’t do that by hiding your IP address. Instead, it:

  • Changes your device’s DNS settings. 
  • Edits your DNS queries. 
  • Sends your traffic through different proxy servers.

If you use a Smart DNS, your Android’s IP will still be visible.

Why Hide Your IP on Android?

Most people do this due to one of the following reasons:

  • They want to unblock geo-locked content. Examples include sites like Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, and more. By hiding their Android IPs, people can use their smartphones to watch shows and movies that aren’t normally available in their countries. 
  • They want to bypass firewalls. Governments and college campuses often use firewalls to block sites (YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, torrent trackers, etc.). If they hide their IPs, they can bypass firewalls and access any site they want. Basically, they communicate with the Internet through an IP that doesn’t have firewall restrictions associated with it. 
  • They want to avoid DDoS attacks. These are cyberattacks that flood people’s network with traffic to the point they don’t have Internet access anymore. By hiding their IPs, cybercriminals can’t use them to target their networks with DDoS attacks anymore.

Know Other Ways to Hide Your IP on Android?

If you know other methods that work, please tell us about them in the comments. And if you use a VPN, proxy, or Tor, please tell us which one is your favorite.

 

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