How to Change Your IP Address and Location With a VPN

Dec 17, 2020

VPNs are becoming more and more popular and essential in today's digital world, particularly for changing your IP address and location. It's now estimated that about 25% of people now use VPNs globally.

Every 39 seconds, hackers perpetuate a cyber-attack.

They have many different reasons for doing it, but usually, what they're trying to accomplish is the same—hiding their true IP address and changing their virtual location.

For these reasons, we put together a quick how-to guide to make using an essential VPN feature as easy as 1-2-3. If you want to skip ahead to make it happen, then feel free to dive right in.

Why You Might Want to Change Your IP Address

Security

These days, the more important question is, "why wouldn't you?" The online world can be a scary place. Every 39 seconds, hackers perpetuate a cyber-attack. That means your risk is extremely large.

That's one of the most common reasons why people decide to change their IP address. Should somebody manage to break a VPNs nearly invincible encryption armor, it would be complicated to track data back to the original user creating a strong security shield.

Country-based restrictions

Further, many people live in countries where government censorship is a serious problem. Aside from the fear of having somebody arrest you for viewing a website, some people just want to use the internet as they normally would. Just ask one of the hundreds of millions of Chinese people who use a VPN every second day.

Access to regional content (Netflix, BBC, etc.)

Finally, one of the most frequent VPNs users is changing IP addresses to access different regional content. With a VPN, you can unlock regional content worldwide by switching to a different IP address in another country. This means you can watch HBO from outside the US, stream BBC iPlayer from outside the UK, and do much more.

So, now, how do you actually go about changing your IP address?

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Spiral Bound

This is essential. You may have heard that you can also use proxies to change your IP address. In the battle between proxies and VPNs, however, VPNs easily come out on top. It's easy for companies like Netflix to spot proxies and potentially even ban your account.

You can find deals on the best VPN services for little more than the cost of a cup of coffee for an entire month of service.

That's why you have to go with a VPN, which provides a much deeper solution in this arena. But not all VPNs are created the same. Most free VPNs simply don't have the resources to be able to circumvent these types of detection. Or if they do, they choke your bandwidth or sell your data. Either way, you'll pay in one way or another for whatever free VPN you go with.

We recently reviewed NordVPN and recommend you give them a try. They were also recently rated the best VPN for accessing regional content. And we tested this feature ourselves and found that it works.

Used here

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Check Price on NordVPN

Other VPN options include:

The bottom line is you need to invest in a paid VPN service. But you don't have to spend too much. You can find deals on the best VPN services for little more than the cost of a cup of coffee for an entire month of service. It doesn't get much better than that!

Once you've found the perfect VPNs for you, it's time to do all the things you'd expect. You need to set up your account, download the VPN onto your devices and ensure you have everything you need.

Mac users

We have a great guide to get you set up with a VPN on a Mac.

Windows users

We also have a great guide to help you set up VPN in Windows.

Do note that you have two options here. You can now directly enable VPNs through Windows without using any software. The advantage is that you're always protected no matter what.

However, we recommend using VPN software for newbies as it's both more straightforward and much easier to change between server locations.

Check that your VPN is working

See our guide on the easiest way to check that your VPN is working.

This is the fun part. You can now select from any of the countries that your VPN providers have servers in.

You'll have the option of either letting their algorithm choose the fastest server for you or picking one or your own.

This is also an excellent time to experiment. Try out different servers in different countries to see all the types of content you have available to you now.

That's really about it. You do have other options. For example, you can also now use browser extensions to connect to VPN servers.

The only question now is what country will you browse from first?

However, we generally recommend sticking to software as it's not only straightforward to use but also protects everything going through your internet connection. On the other hand, if you use a browser-based VPN, only that data will be protected, so everything else you do online, like browse social media, is still vulnerable.

Finally, remember you have additional security options with the highest levels of security are not. High-quality VPNs offer Tor-over-VPN and even double VPN protection to keep you truly safe.

Now you have everything you need to get out there and make the most out of your VPN. The only question now is what country will you browse from first?