What is my IP address?

What is an IP address?

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is the number that identifies your connection on the internet. Every time you open a website, your device sends requests from this address, and the website sends its reply back to it. At home it usually belongs to your router and is shared by every device on your Wi-Fi; on mobile data it belongs to your carrier’s network.

IPv4 and IPv6

IPv4 addresses look like 203.0.113.7 and there are only about four billion of them, so providers often share one between many customers. IPv6 addresses are longer, like 2001:db8::1, and there are enough for every device. Many connections have both. This page shows the address your browser used for this request and which family it belongs to.

What can a website learn from your IP?

From your IP address alone, a site can usually tell your country, often your region or city, and the name of your internet provider. It cannot see your street address or your name, but it can combine your IP with cookies and sign-ins to recognise you across visits, and your provider can match the address to your account.

How accurate is IP location?

IP location comes from databases that map address ranges to places. Country is usually right; city can be off by tens of kilometres, especially on mobile networks. We use the DB-IP Lite database, plus our own list of VPNRice server addresses so we can tell when you are protected.

How to hide your IP address

A VPN sends your traffic through one of its servers, so websites see the server’s address and location instead of yours. With VPNRice connected, this page turns green and shows the country of the server you are using. Also run the WebRTC leak test to check that your browser doesn’t reveal local addresses another way.