Change IP

I think mebbe you're a bit confused - that's a provider's instructions to their subscribers; without an account with that provider, and the appropriate logon info, nothing there is gonna do much for you.

If you wanna mask your IP, you can always use an anonymyzer - a proxy - though that will screw up functionality for you on some websites. There are some free ones out there, but paid subscription services tend to work better. And, though I won't tell you how, if you're unethical enough to make it desireable to do so, and have the skills, you can even "Spoof" an IP.

thanks timberlandko for the information...

There's been a handful of requests for changing one's IP.

First, there is nothing inherently illegal about masking your IP. (Of course, doing something illegal with a masked IP is illegal).

Second, it is often not a useful thing to do. Most people I have spoken to who want to change their IP are trying to accomplish something that using a proxy (the easiest way to mask ones IP address) won't address.

Do you want to explain what you are trying to do that requires that your IP is not revealed?

im trying to surf the net with out any sites knowing...

The phrase "without any sites knowing" is not clear. There are several different technologies you can use to give different levels of anonymity.

The biggest threats to your privacy are not your IP address. They are spyware and cookies. If your computer has spyware than there is nothing you can do to protect your privacy. Cookies can mark you and tell websites what other sites you have been to (which is a form of identifying you).

Fortunately cookies are easy to manage if you educate yourself (I assume you have done this). To protect against spyware make sure you have up to date software and be careful what you download.

These two things provide more than enough privacy for most of my needs. Most ISPs use dhcp technology meaning your IP address changes. Your ISP is the only people who can directly connect you to the IP you have.

Using an anonymizer (and there are several you can search for) will mask your IP. These work by taking your requests and forwarding them to the website you are connecting to with the IP address of the anonymizer.

But again, usually websites can't connect your IP to you directly anyway without help from your ISP. If your ISP isn't respecting your privacy than a normal anonymizer won't help you a bit.

Anonymizers also add a bit of risk if the person who is running the anonymizer is crooked. They have access to all of the data that passes through their server.

There are "onion servers" that are a pretty cool technology. They use several layers of anonymizer and you can get pretty good privacy by sending your requests through many hosts. Each "jump" doesn't know where your message is coming from or going to. This makes it must less likely that an dishonest host can violate your privacy.

Tor is the best onion server I know about and you can google it.

But again, for most of us just using our given IP adresses provides an adequate level of privacy. A website can deduce things like the browswer we are using, our ISP and even the city we are from. But this doesn't identify us from the thousands of customers in our area. This with normal caution with cookies and spyware is plenty good enough.

If you plan on doing something illegal (which theoretically includes downloading copyrighted material) know that even with these methods, a simple seach warrant served to your ISP is enough to find out where you have been.

Unless you are an expert in computer security, you should assume that if someone with legal authority and technical know how can see everything you have done online if they have reason.

so a good site would be like EDIT (Moderator): Link Removed

ebrown's advice is right on. Good browsing, email, and chat/messaging practice, properly configured and deployed security and privacy software, a properly configured browser, and properly configured hardware firewall (such as found even on inexpensive routers) will better protect your security and privacy than will any anonymyzer. As for the one you mentioned, it appears to be an unknown startup with barely a couple months of web presence and an amaturish, ad-laden splashpage that irritated my security/privacy software and touted itself with poor grammar and useage.

Practice Safe Hex and you'll be far better off than if you rely on somebody else's promisses; your security and privacy are your own responsibility and nobody can take better care of them than you can - and should.