Your IP address is not a secret: every website, app and game server you connect to sees it, because it could not answer you otherwise. The useful question is not how to hide it from everyone, but what the real risk is and which measures make sense.
What someone can do with your IP
- Learn your provider and a rough area. An IP lookup shows the network and an estimated location, usually at city or state level and often wrong. It does not show your name or street address; see Can someone find me from my IP address?.
- Link your visits. Websites and ad networks can use the address, together with cookies and browser fingerprinting, to recognise you.
- Try to connect to your network. Scanners sweep the internet for devices with open ports. A router or camera exposing a service with a weak password is the real risk.
- Flood your connection. It happens in online games: someone who knows your IP sends junk traffic (DDoS). Restarting the router to get a new address usually ends it.
What they cannot do is get into your computer just by knowing the address, or obtain your personal details. Only your provider can link an address to a subscriber, and only shares that under legal process.
What actually protects you
- Keep your router updated and change its factory admin password. Turn off remote administration, UPnP and port forwards you don’t use.
- Don’t expose cameras or network drives directly to the internet; use the vendor’s app or your own VPN.
- Use a VPN if you don’t want sites to see your IP, or the network you are on (public Wi-Fi, say) to see where you connect. A VPN does not make you anonymous: its operator now sees what your provider saw. See VPNs and your IP address.
- Check for leaks. Some VPNs let IPv6 or WebRTC through. The WebRTC leak test and the IPv6 test show which address sites really see.
- Encrypt your DNS (DNS over HTTPS or TLS) so the network in between cannot see the names you look up. Public DNS resolvers explains the options.
- Check blocklists if some sites suddenly block you or show endless captchas: the blacklist check queries the main public lists.
And IPv6?
With IPv6 every device can have its own public address, with no NAT in between. That does not make it insecure: current routers block incoming connections by default, and operating systems rotate the end of the address (temporary addresses) so it cannot be used to follow you. Just check that your router’s IPv6 firewall is on.