The Only IP Address Finder You’ll Ever Need
The question of “how to protect my IP address?” is one that likely often pops up in the minds of anyone who uses the internet at least somewhat frequently. In order to learn how to do so, however, it’s important to first understand what is an IP address, in the first place.
In this article, that is exactly what you’ll be able to learn. First, we’ll briefly go over what is an IP address, and why it’s important to know yours. Once that’s out of the way, and we’ve covered all of the fundamental information - what’ an IP address, what can you do with it and so on -, I’ll tell you the most straightforward way of how to find your IP address.
Let me tell you in advance though - if you’re looking to protect your IP address, using a VPN to do so is the most effective method out there.
What is an IP Address?
Let me just be clear about something - internet speed isn’t a steady parameter. It’s an always-changing statistic, and depending on some different factors, some days it’s going to be faster, and other days, well… It might be a whole lot slower.
IP translates to “Internet Protocol”. Even if you don’t really know “how to find my IP address”, you’ve likely seen a fair share of IPs throughout your time of browsing the web - they are small strings of numbers that are interrupted by dots at some specific places. In total, you’ll find two different types of IP addresses - IPv4 (the old one), and IPv6 (the new-and-improved one).
For anyone looking for “how to find my IP address”, there’s a pretty simple way of thinking about it - imagine that an IP address is equivalent to the address of your house. Say, you’re waiting for a letter from your friend - the friend needs to send that letter to your address, or else you aren’t going to receive it and it’ll get lost in the mail, right?
IP addresses are very similar when it comes to their purpose. You’ll find that these strings of numbers tend to serve two specific purposes:
1. Identifying you on a network;
2. Identifying your location on that specific network.
Anyone looking for how to find my IP address should understand that both of these purposes are essential. IPs serve as identifying tags for you - passports, if you will -, only in the digital world. To be frank, protecting your IP address is actually quite similar to protecting your passport, too.
Why Should You Protect Your IP?
In the vast majority of cases, anyone who’s looking for how to find my IP address is doing so with the intent of protecting their personal information from potential hackers and scammers.
What do ‘hackers and scammers’ have to do with IP addresses, though?
Quite a lot, actually. To figure out the specifics, we should first understand that there are two different kinds of IP addresses that you might come across - internal and external ones (in other words, private and public ones).
Upload speed probably doesn’t really need all that much explanation, now does it? Quite frankly, it’s the speed at which you can upload files from your hardware device to the network - pretty self-explanatory stuff. The two types of internet speeds do affect each other, however - if you’re downloading a file, your uploads are going to be slower (and vice versa).
In order to establish that connection, however, both of the devices need their separate, private IP addresses.
Most people looking to learn “what is my external IP?”, however, aren’t too worried about their private IPs - it’s the public, external ones that they want to protect. There are a few different reasons why that’s the case - all of them have to do with losing sensitive information to third parties, though.
A couple of examples would include:
- ISPs interfering with your privacy. If you’re not cloaking (hiding) your external IP address, your internet service provider is going to be able to see everything that you’re doing online - the sites that you visit, the information that you expose on those sites, your purchases, and so on. Truth be told, it’s probably a no-brainer that a private person isn’t exactly happy about some large company snooping around in their private business.
- DOXING. Streamers and YouTubers are two groups of people that are constantly looking at “how to find my IP address?” with the intent to see if it’s hidden. Doxing is one of the biggest reasons for this - when you’re doxed, your sensitive information (address, email, phone number, postal code, etc.) is exposed for everyone online to see. Worst case scenario, this can result in swatting - some Twitch and YouTube stars could probably tell you how horrible of an act this truly is.
As you can probably tell by now, the question of how to find your IP address often isn’t just a “fun thing to do” - it’s actually quite important. That being said, let’s cut to the chase and figure out how to find IP address, and how to then protect it.
How to Find My IP Address? The Ultimate Tool
While looking up “what is my external IP?”, you’ve likely noticed that there are endless amounts of different tools that promise to display you your IP address in all of its glory. So… What’s so special about this particular tool, then? A few things, actually.
Simplicity
Simplicity is one of the first requirements for an IP checking tool to be effective. There are simply too many different IP checkers out there that require you to perform multiple different actions in order to learn what is your IP address.
Tedious? Definitely. Unnecessary? Absolutely.
While it can be annoying, oftentimes, it’s actually even worse than that. Some pages might try to trick you with fake buttons and spammy “tool download” links - worst-case scenario, you’ll end up in a situation that you were actually trying to avoid.
You’ll find none of that with the tool in question here - it’s super-simple to use, and does not require you to download any third-party software.
Specificness
How would you feel if you were to look for “what is my external IP?”, and would instead be presented the internal one? Not ideal, right? Well, that’s another issue that you might encounter with different IP checkers found online - lack of specificness.
Yet again, however, it’s not something that you’d need to worry about with our IP-checking tool - here, you’ll be able to learn your external (public) IP address.
Reliability
Probably one of the most essential features that you’d come to expect out of a tool that can teach “how to find my IP address” is reliability. Believe it or not, but there are tools out there that are going to simply display random numbers instead of your actual IP address.
Yup - that’s quite horrible.
The tool you’ll find here is going to provide you with your actual, real external IP address - no catches, no tricks, none of that.
I Know My IP… What Now?
You now know your public IP address. So… What now?
The next logical step would be to hide it. I mean, that’s one of the main reasons why people look at “how to find my IP address”, in the first place - naturally, there should be an easy way to do so, right?
As a matter of fact, yes, there’s actually a tool designed to do just that - a VPN.
VPN abbreviates as a “Virtual Private Network”. As the name implies, these tools are used to create private networks that you can then utilize in order to mask your real IP address and use a fake one in its place. Needless to say, this has a few distinct benefits.
With a VPN, for example, you’ll be able to torrent files in peace. Well, to be frank, you’ll actually have the ability to participate in any Peer-to-Peer file sharing - no need to worry that your ISP might interfere or that you might get into trouble for downloading a file via some torrenting site.
Region-locked content is another big one. If you live outside of the US, you probably know the struggle of only being able to watch a limited number of shows via Netflix. With a top-tier VPN, this struggle will be no-more - you’ll be able to unlock all of that content by choosing an IP address based within the US
Also, I probably don’t even need to mention this by now since most people looking for “how to find my IP address?” will use a VPN for this reason, but security is the top quality of these tools. If you care about the security of your private information, hen a VPN is the go-to tool for you to use.
If you’re interested, you can check out our list of the best VPN providers in the current industry. Having figured out “how to find my IP address”, all that’s left to do is secure it from possible threats - a high-end VPN will help you do just that, and provide you with a peace of mind while browsing the internet.
Conclusions
By now, you should not only know “how to find my IP address”, but also be more knowledgeable about what are IP addresses, in general. With the information provided in this article at your disposal, you stand a much better chance against the malicious third parties that might have their sights set on your private information.
Do keep in mind, however, that knowing a piece of information and using it in order to ensure the security of your data are two very different things. Simply “keeping the info in mind” isn’t going to protect you for potential threats - if you’re serious about data security, you’ll need to trust one of the top VPN providers out there.