The following article will show you How to Hide Your IP Address on Mac or iPhone.
Several vital things work behind the scenes while you browse the internet. One of them is the IP address, which is responsible for your network interface identification and location addressing.
The IP addresses are unique to every user on the web, and it works as an identifier, similar to your mobile number or your home address.
An IP address also holds metadata of your geographical location, and anyone on the internet can track it.
Third-party advertisers can anonymously track your IP and follow your preferences to serve you pop-ups and advertisements, which can get extremely annoying at times when you need to get your important work done.
It also creates privacy concerns about your personal data being leeched off by your internet service provider, government agencies, cybercriminals, and other threats.
You can repel your online security concerns by just hiding your IP address and surf the web free of trackers and pop-up advertisements. If you are daily driving a Mac device, then this guide will help you hide your IP address on Mac.
Why Should you Hide your IP Address on MAC / iPhone?
There are several compelling reasons for hiding your iPhone or MAC IP address, now that user data collection is relevant and aggressive more than ever.
A vast majority of internet service providers consider dynamic IP as a cost-effective solution, changing your IP address from time to time. While it’s great for your privacy on the web, there’s a chance that someone is still tracking your browsing activities.
1. Get Rid of Third-Party Advertisers
When you visit an e-commerce website and search for a product, third-party trackers snoop on your activities to determine your interests.
Later on, you might see ads about the same product on entirely unrelated websites, trying to lure you into clicking the ad banner so that the advertisers can make a buck. From a marketing standpoint, it’s an ingenious solution to selling products online to those who are interested.
However, it’s a nightmare for privacy-concerned users, especially if you have previously searched for something that might be embarrassing for you in front of others using your device. It’s an invasion of user privacy, and no one should encourage this behavior.
By hiding your IP address, you can browse the internet without worrying about advertisers tracking you, as the data collection will be allotted to the spoofed IP.
2. Maintain your Anonymity in Public
Whether you are at the public library or your favorite coffee shop, the inclusion of a public Wi-Fi hotspot gives you access to the internet, which gets your job done on the go. However, public Wi-Fi hotspots are notorious for being insecure and easily exploitable.
Someone can use it as a medium to snoop into your browsing history and steal your sensitive credentials. It also breaks your anonymous status in public.
When you hide your IP address using a VPN service, you also encrypt your network traffic in the process. It’s almost impossible for someone to break the encryption and steal your data, and your presence on the Wi-Fi network stays completely anonymous.
3. Access Geo-Restricted Content
Many video-on-demand services are bound to regional streaming rights, which is why companies enforce geo-restrictions on their streaming services. For example, you and others might be interested in an American show, but then you find out that it’s streaming exclusively on a particular service unavailable in your country.
In such cases, you can hide your real IP address and get a temporary one by routing your network traffic to a private server in a different country or region. It helps you not only avoid being blacklisted by the streaming service but also access the geo-restricted content.
4. Bypass Private Network Restrictions
Suppose you are connected to a school, college, or office Wi-Fi. There’s a chance that your institute or organization has put restriction protocols on certain websites using network software.
In that case, hiding your IP address will also block the software from looking at your DNS requests and browsing activities, and you can unblock all the websites on the private network.
5. Mask your Real Location
Even though your IP address doesn’t completely give up your current location, someone can still get an idea of where you live.
By hiding your real IP address, you can safely browse through websites that have access to your location, mainly social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, that collect your location data and make it publicly available for others by default.
How to Hide your IP Address on Mac or iPhone
As we have mentioned in the second point above, you can hide your real IP address using a VPN service. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) lets you route your network activity through anonymous servers in different locations.
The network connection between your device and the server stays encrypted so that no one (even your ISP) can track your internet activities. Here’s how it works.
A VPN asks for web requests from its proprietary servers instead of your local DNS server, so the websites you visit log the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, while you are connected to the VPN.
As long as you are connected, your real IP address stays secret, and you can take advantage of all the benefits we have mentioned in the previous section of this guide.
Hide your IP Address on Mac Using ExpressVPN
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ExpressVPN offers exceptional VPN service in 94 countries worldwide, with over 3000+ servers spread across 160 locations. You can connect to the fastest ExpressVPN server nearby and access the web privately and securely.
ExpressVPN lets you choose between six different VPN protocols, including OpenVPN (TCP/UDP), WireGuard, IKEv2, etc. It also encrypts your internet traffic with AES-256 encryption. Combined with its advanced DNS leak protection, your sensitive data stays safe from the prying eyes.
You can hide your MAC IP by connecting to one of ExpressVPN’s trusted servers, which doesn’t collect your personal data or log your browsing sessions.
You will also find ExpressVPN’s Network Lock feature quite useful. In case your connection to the VPN fails, it auto-disables your internet access on the device and restores it when the client app establishes the VPN connection back again.
It helps your real IP address from being leaked in situations where you need to stay anonymous on the internet.
ExpressVPN officially supports a large number of operating systems, including macOS. Here’s how you can use it to hide your IP address on Mac device in just four steps:
- First, go to expressvpn.com and sign up for an ExpressVPN subscription. It’s wallet-friendly, and you get 24/7 customer support.
- After that, visit expressvpn.com/vpn-software/vpn-mac and follow the video tutorial to download and install the ExpressVPN client on your Mac.
- Once you go through the first-time setup process and activate the ExpressVPN client, you can either let ExpresVPN decide the best server for you or manually select your preferred VPN server from the smart picker.
- Click the power icon in the ExpressVPN client. You will be instantly connected to the selected server.
Conclusion
In this guide, we have thoroughly discussed the importance of hiding your IP address and showed you how to do it on Mac using ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN works on the latest version of macOS Catalina (10.15), as well as Mojave (10.14), High Sierra (10.13), El Capitan (10.11), and Yosemite (10.11). Supported Mac devices include iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Pro, Mac mini, etc.
