// HUB / PRIVACY
Online Privacy Tools
Understand what your connection reveals about you, and how VPNs, Tor and proxies change it — including what they genuinely protect and what they do not.
// Tools in this section
// What your connection gives away — and what actually hides it
Every site you load sees your IP address before it sends you a single byte. From it, a reasonably accurate country, a rough city and the name of your ISP can be derived, and combined with cookies and the details your browser volunteers, that is enough to build a durable picture of you. None of it requires your consent or is visible to you while it happens.
The tools and guides here deal with the network layer of that problem. Begin by seeing what you currently expose: What Is My IP shows both address formats along with the location and provider derived from them. Hide My IP then compares the three ways to change what sites see — a VPN, the Tor network, and a proxy — and what each one costs you in speed and in trust.
It is worth being clear about how far this goes. Masking your IP stops a site reading your location from your connection and stops your ISP seeing which sites you visit, but it does not make you anonymous. If you log in, you are identified. Cookies, browser fingerprinting and account activity all survive an IP change, and whichever service you route through can see the traffic your ISP no longer can. The real choice is about who you would rather trust, not about disappearing.
Leaks are the other common failure. A VPN can be running correctly while DNS queries still go to your ISP's resolver, or while WebRTC quietly hands your real address to a web page. Checking after you connect, rather than assuming, is the difference between privacy you have and privacy you think you have — the WebRTC Leak Test does exactly that for the WebRTC half.
// Frequently asked questions
- What can someone actually learn from my IP address?
- Your approximate location — usually the right country and a plausible city — and the name of your ISP or hosting provider. It does not reveal your name, your address or your browsing history. Only your ISP can connect an address to a subscriber, and normally only under legal process.
- Does a VPN make me anonymous?
- No. It hides your IP from the sites you visit and hides your browsing from your ISP, but you can still be identified by logging in, by cookies and by browser fingerprinting. You also move your trust from your ISP to the VPN provider.
- Is Tor better than a VPN?
- For anonymity, yes — Tor routes traffic through three relays, so no single one knows both who you are and where you are going. The trade-off is speed: it is much slower, and some sites block it outright. For everyday privacy a reputable VPN is more practical.
- Does incognito or private browsing hide my IP address?
- No. Private mode only stops your browser saving history, cookies and form data locally. Websites, your ISP and your workplace network all still see your real IP address.
- Are free VPNs safe to use?
- Treat them with caution. Running a VPN network costs money, and providers that do not charge often recoup it by logging activity, selling data or injecting ads. Prefer an audited, no-logs provider you pay for.