How do hackers hide their IP address from prying eyes
Hackers are known for breaking into most impregnable web servers around the world and still avoid being caught. One of the main reasons for that is that they hide their IP addresses from prying eyes of the authorities. Using various techniques that we discuss below, a hacker operating from Canada uses IP address of South Korea to conduct leet operations. Have you ever wondered how these hackers remain hidden from the authorities? One obvious thought that comes to mind – how do they cover their tracks while accessing the big bad world of the internet?
There are quite a few recommended methods to be incognito on the internet and it’s not just for hackers but also for ordinary users to stay anonymous. Quite a few people would prefer the rest of the world staying in the dark about their activities. It might be individuals from a nation that represses internet access to someone wanting to access a series on Netflix that’s not available in their country yet. Irrespective of the reason, these tricks should find your attention.
Proxy
No matter what your level of expertise with technology, a proxy is by far the goto to hide your information on the internet. For those unfamiliar with proxies, a basic idea of how they work – a proxy will reroute your connection from via a third party server so the website you access will not be able to read data specific to you. For example, A lives in England but uses a proxy server based in Germany to access a website W. Now the website, while accessing user information will find user A accessing their site from Germany instead of England. This is just an example, in reality, the proxy will hide all of your information from the resources you access. Any server on the other end will only get the information that you provide.
There are plenty of free and paid proxies available. Although a word of caution. If you intend to use a proxy to carry out some serious work, its recommended staying away from a free proxy for the sheer number of individuals that will be using this free proxy at any given time. If you do manage to get a stable connection, it’ll last for a short while.
Some popular proxies:
- BuyProxies
- HideMyAss
- MyPrivateProxies
- YourPrivateProxy
- EZProxies
- Anonymous-Proxies
- LimeProxies
- SSLPrivateProxy
- NewIPNow
- ProxyNVPN
- SquidProxies
TOR
Another popular approach to hide your tracks and a very popular one – using the TOR browser and the Tor network. The Tor network in simpler terms sounds like a proxy on steroids. The network will bounce your connection across multiple points to provide even higher anonymity to it’s user. Their network contains multiple tunnels across the globe, that are used to bounce the users signal. The network is accessed from the Tor browser and websites on the network have a specific address that you need to know to be able to access them. While it does provide anonymity, one should also note the threats from using the network. Being anonymous also means the people you interact with are anonymous. Also note-worthy is the fact that though the network is secure, the browser itself isn’t. The Tor browser is just a variation of the Firefox browser and is susceptible to everything Firefox is susceptible to.
VPN
A virtual network provider will be the next level of security. A VPN basically extends a private network over the public internet, which in turn scrambles the data passing between you and a web server leaving it useless for anyone trying to access it. While it doesn’t prevent someone from attacking your machine directly, it does a pretty good job of hiding your identity. Using a VPN in combination with any of the two mentioned methods might offer you the best possible way to hide your identity on the internet.
The Extreme Option
One should note however secure these options may sound, there is always a thin possibility of someone tracking your machine. even with all 3 of these options, one can still manage to send a malware to your machine or simply try and track down your MAC address. If one wishes to cover one’s tracks on the Internet, find a free WiFi access point, modify your WiFi card’s MAC address, and boot your computer from a “live CD”, running totally in the RAM will give you the absolute highest order of anonymity possible.