How to Change Your IP Address

Posted by Carter Campbell on June 20th, 2019

IP addresses play an essential role in facilitating a two-way communication with network-connected devices, computers, and phones while sending and receiving data. While being hacked through your IP address is difficult since internet service providers and routers have firewalls, however, with this location data, hackers can get hold of valuable personal information like your city, state, and ZIP code.

Your IP address is a unique maker for your devices, associated with ports that act as entryways which allow various applications to send information to you. If by any chance you are connected to the internet and running multiple programs, it can make it easy for anyone to access your connection and learn your IP address. It only makes perfect sense to change your IP address or hide your real address to keep yourself safe online.

If you carry out a quick search of "my IP address," chances are that you will either get a brief description of your location or a detailed one. There are many ways you can change your IP in order to avoid online bans, to bypass country location restrictions, or keep malicious people including various government entities from knowing who or where you are when you surf the web. Changing an IP address is particularly suitable when you have a malfunctioning router, when you have accidentally configured an invalid static IP address or when you are planning on re-configuring your home network to use a default IP address.

Consider the following tips;

1. One of the fastest ways to mask your actual IP address and change your virtual location consequently, make it difficult for websites to track your location is by using a VPN service. Not only does the free service in Opera block tracking cookies, but it also does not require a subscription, it is unlimited, and available for iOS and Android
2. If you want to be assigned a new address in your country of origin, then using web-based proxies or changing your network settings might be your best option
3. You can also change your IP address by simply turning your router off for a couple of hours or reset your modem
4. Changing your location may seem like a far-fetched approach, but you will be assigned a different IP address, for example, when at work or your local coffee shop
5. Yet another way you can change your IP address is to either change a static IP address or renew the DHCP IP address through the ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew commands in Command Prompt
6. To change the public IP address of your smartphone, you may want to either restart your device a few times in order to get yourself a new IP address or use someone else's network or free Wi-Fi services to obtain an IP address from that network