How to change your IP address

You can change the address websites see in a few minutes. Which way is right depends on why you want to change it.

First, check what you have now

Open our home page and note the IPv4 address at the top. After each method below, reload the page to see whether it changed.

1. Restart the router

Most home connections have a dynamic address. Switch the router off, wait five minutes and switch it on. Many providers give a new address at once. Some give the old one back until its lease runs out, which can take hours or days; leaving the router off overnight often does it.

Good for: getting out of a block or an attack aimed at your old address. Does not change your provider or your area.

2. Flight mode on mobile data

On a phone using mobile data, turn flight mode on, wait ten seconds, and turn it off. The mobile network usually hands out a different address. This is the fastest method of all.

3. Switch to another network

Moving from home Wi-Fi to mobile data, or to the Wi-Fi of an office or a friend, changes your public address immediately, because the address belongs to the network and not to your device. A phone's hotspot is an easy way to give a laptop a different address for a few minutes.

4. Ask your internet provider

If the address never changes, or if it is being attacked or has been wrongly blocked, the provider's support can assign a different one. This is also the only way to change a static address.

5. Use a VPN

A VPN sends your traffic through a server run by the VPN company, so websites see the server's address and not yours. You can usually pick the server's country. Read what a VPN does and does not do before trusting one: you are moving your trust from your internet provider to the VPN company, and free VPNs often pay for themselves with your data.

6. Use a proxy or the Tor Browser

A proxy passes on the traffic of one app, usually the browser, through another computer. It changes the address websites see but normally adds no encryption. The Tor Browser sends traffic through three volunteer-run relays, which hides your address well but is slow and blocked by some sites.

Changing the private address inside your home

That is a different job. To give a device a different address on your own Wi-Fi:

• Let the router do it: in the router's settings, find the DHCP or LAN section and reserve an address for the device. This is the safest way.
• Set it on the device: Windows (Settings › Network & internet › your connection › IP assignment › Edit › Manual), Android (Wi-Fi network settings › IP settings › Static), iPhone (Wi-Fi › (i) › Configure IP › Manual). Choose an address in the same range as the router that no other device uses, and enter the router's address as gateway. A wrong value here cuts the device off until you switch back to Automatic.

What changing your address does not do

• It does not log you out of accounts or make you a new person to a website. Cookies and logins identify you far better than an address. See browser fingerprints.
• It does not make illegal activity legal or untraceable.
• It does not remove a ban on an account, only a block on an address.