Tips to deter others from digitally tracking you

Preventing bad actors from using your IP address to load malware onto your devices, serve you with ransomware, hack into your financial accounts, or steal your entire online identity is crucial nowadays.

However, note that nothing offered here below will hide you from your ISP or police. Network managers can always track your online activity, and they have your address from when you enrolled with them for service. Law enforcement agencies can work with ISPs to see suspicious online activity and discover who and where you are.

Some applications query your IP address to know your device location to help serve personalized content. Hackers can create websites or apps containing links that grab IP addresses, and this is one way how individuals and companies become victims. Knowing your IP address enables attackers to hack into your computer, attack a company server, or stalk a person.

You can protect yourself from the potential trouble of anyone knowing your IP address by using these strategies.

• Buying Premium VPN Services

Someone trying to track you down can only go as far as seeing the VPN you use, not from where you are connecting to that VPN. Your IP is masked. Be aware that free services often sell your data to cover costs, and they might not encrypt your data.

• Buying Web Proxy Services

Like VPNs, web proxies carry your connections through their own servers, which conceals your IP address. But it is not equal to entirely hiding it id you don’t pay for a good proxy service. ISPs and tech-savvy hackers can still see your IP address.

• Verifying Public Wi-Fi Safety

Make sure to verify that a legitimate organization truly sponsors any public Wi-Fi you access. Then you can probably connect to it safely without exposing your IP address. Better use a VPN when accessing public Wi-Fi.

• Using Specialty Browsers

Some web browsers provide a free built-in VPN through their own servers (TOR, Opera).

• Using Anonymous Email Service

It puts up false clues by masking the email header affixed to the top of your email and blocks more than just your IP address. Email headers contain the IP addresses of all the computer systems that have relayed your message between sender and receiver, providing all the handy email metadata.

Use a phony email account (burner, throwaway, temporary, and disposable email addresses).  The service generates a random email address and sends responses from its servers back to your designated real email address, which the sender or responder does not know.

Stay cyber safe.