How to get an anonymous ip number ???

When you visit my simple website, www.ip-number.com, you can see what IP address you have.

Currently your IP address is: ---.---.-.---

You might think that this is only a random series of numbers and that they can't identify you in any way. Well, think again.
These numbers can tell me alot of things, what country you are from, where in the country you are located, what ISP your are using, if you are using the internet from work i could find out what company you work for and so on.

Big deal! Right?
Well, yeah, in most cases it really doesnt matter that alot of stuff can be found out about you only by these numbers, but sometimes it does matter. I can think of many reasons for being anonymous, perhaps you want to surf porn and don't like the idea that it could be traced back to your house. Perhaps you want to post something on a blog, in a forum, and you could get in trouble if it could be connected to you later on. What do i know, perhaps you want to engage in a little click fraud with ads on the net? Or might it just be that you want som privacy, just want to be left alone...

So how can you hide your ip number and get another?

One pretty simple way to go about it is to download the Tor program on your computer, fiddle a few seconds with your browser settings and pretty soon you can be surfing without revealing your true IP address!

Download section (windows users, use the first one in the list, something like 0.1.1.23)
Intallation instructions (don't bother with "Configure it as a server", it's not necessary to use Tor)

If you are using Firefox, which you should, then install the Add-on Torbutton for simple switching between anonymous and regular mode

You might think it sounds great but what are the downsides?

OK, this is how it works (in very simple terms):
When you use the Tor program you get connected to thousands of other computers around the world. When you are surfing the net with your browser you go throught a few random computers in this network and get an anonymous ip address to use. The downside to this is that the speed of you connection in this network is never higher than the lowest speed of the computers you are connected with, so if one of these computers are connected to an old school modem you are getting the same low speed. So this is not for downloading large amounts of data, movies and stuff.

There is much more to read about downsides and benefits of the Tor network, go check it out at tor.eff.org

And when you are going to try out your new IP address, don't forget www-ip-number.com

Be safe!
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