I’ve been wondering about the practical value of changing your IP address for everyday privacy.
If a website can still recognize a browser through cookies, fingerprinting, or a logged-in account, how much does a different IP actually change?
I’m curious how people here think about this. Does changing your IP meaningfully reduce tracking in some situations, or is its impact often overstated?
I imagine the answer depends on the kind of tracking involved, but I’d be interested in hearing how others approach this.
It’s not overstated as it can indeed in many cases be uniquely identifying; 15% of people live alone. But it’s often emphasized, e.g. by VPN marketers.
IP address is one of many data points that can tie your online activity together. It’s like a gigantic game of guess who with tons of attributes that when combined can uniquely identify you.
You’ll want to get rid of the rest but eliminating identifying information isn’t as simple as “don’t accept cookies, now you can’t be tracked”. Yes but now you’re in the tiny group of users who don’t have cookies but have other tracking elements that can tie sessions. The proper strategy is to blend in with as many uses as possible, and your best bet for that is Tor Browser, provided the site isn’t blocking it. Tor bundles all users into three buckets based on the security slider setting, with IIRC default having most users, maximum next most, and middle setting least users. They were not terribly skewed but the order was interesting.
Some sites block Tor’s exit nodes, but the base browser it uses can be used without Tor too, Mullvad has a fork of it, and it doesn’t require their VPN. Their VPN is decent but mainly for the weak threat model of deterring commercial tracking via IP. For anything more serious you’ll want Tor, and preferably Tails OS live session as it doesn’t have your files.
Swapping the IP occasionally does help, as it can block tying sessions together with the IP, but if it’s cookies or something else ties your sessions together instead, the server can just record the IP swapping as interesting behavior that you do, and that behavioral aspect may persist longer than the cookies.
Yes, almost certainly. The advantages of a VPN include: 1. Hiding your traffic from only your Internet Service Provider. 1. Hiding your IP from third-party websites and services, preventing IP based tracking
Short answer is… It doesn’t.
It is more efficient to set a specific goal and then take action toward it. For example, if you wanted to browse News sites, Informative sites, free streaming sites, etc more anonymously, you could simply use Tor Browser.
Using VPN and connecting a server you don’t usually use combined with something like mullvad browser achieves a similar result.
Using a VPN correctly is more technical though.