The Best Way to Hide Your Location When Doing Security Research Online

The Best Way to Hide Your Location When Doing Security Research Online

Considering how the digital world works now, an institute always looks for your data, whether a government organization, internet service provider, or a brand trying to sell its products to you. But, as the owner of your data, it is understandable that you wouldn’t want anybody poking their nose around your business, especially if what you’re doing has security measures.

Aside from your data being vulnerable, there are instances when a website might block your country of origin from accessing its content. While there might be a lot of reasons why it happens, it’s such a bummer when you are doing it for research.

Keeping that in perspective, you might be thinking about hiding your location or internet activity from others. But is that even possible? The short answer is yes! In this article, we will discuss ways how you can hide your location when doing research online. Keep on reading.

Top Ways to Hide Your Location When Doing Security Research

The first question that most people ask is how to remain anonymous on the web. While you can try to hide your activity from ISPs, you can’t be completely anonymous.

Here are a few ways through which you can hide your IP address.

1. Use a Virtual Private Network

A Virtual Private Network, commonly known as a VPN, is an internet tool that allows you to hide your connection data and internet activity from other users, agencies, and government organizations.

It involves re-routing your services through a private server instead of an individual so you can access or surpass restrictions anonymously. VPNs offer far more outstanding service and speed than proxies, which is why people go for them.

The best part about using a VPN is they offer blanket protection beyond your browser. When you turn on a VPN, all your internet activity on the device will be encrypted, whether you’re searching the engine or browsing other applications.

2. Use Residential IP Address Proxies

Residential proxies allow you to choose a location anywhere in the world, and you can continue to use the internet as a genuine user from that area. Proxies, residential or otherwise, act as intermediaries to protect internet users from general web traffic.

A proxy would act as a buffer while concealing your location. They assign you an alternate IP address; in this case, a residential proxy will allot a residential IP address to your network so your location can be concealed without drawing too much attention.

Many people go for residential proxies because it enables you to act as a genuine user on the internet. It doesn’t appear concealment, and you operate from a residential location along with millions of other real users.

The alternative IP address that a proxy server assigns you channels all your internet activity and then routes it to the source server. Depending on what package you purchase from the proxy provider, it will allow you to act as a user from several targeted countries to conceal your location.

Here are some uses of residential proxies:

• Web scraping

• Ad verification

• Accessing sneaker sites

• Market price monitoring

• Internet Marketing

• Security research

• Accessing ticket sites

• Social media management

So, whether you’re doing security research or trying to surpass restrictions set by your government, residential proxies and VPNs can come in handy to continue your internet activity anonymously.

3. Use Tor to Improve Your Privacy

Tor is an internet browser highly recommended for individuals who have a habit of going nuts over their internet privacy. It is a free-to-use browser run by a worldwide network of volunteer-run computers to ensure the user data remains hidden.

If you happen to be someone who doesn’t like spending money on a browser, Tor might be the thing you were looking for. However, remember that it may be challenging to track someone using Tor to hide their activity, but it’s not impossible.

If you visit any website that doesn’t support HTTPS, then there is a great chance your activity will be tracked where your IP registers. It’s also prolonged but does the job, which is why many internet users prefer Tor.

4. Try Encrypted Email Services

Protecting your activity on the internet is one part of your security efforts. Because you also share plenty of helpful information via email correspondence. If you’re concerned about your security, perhaps it is time to consider using encrypted email service providers.

An email encryption service provider ensures that all the emails you send via your server feature end-to-end encryption. This means if someone tries to intercept the correspondence, they won’t be able to understand the data that’s being displayed.

An email encryption service provider ensures all your information remains safe. However, these encryption services won’t be able to protect your browsing activity.

5. Never Rely on Incognito Mode

Most browsers, such as Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and even Google Chrome, allow you to turn on Incognito mode if you want to mask your internet activity. However, we have seen how many people overestimate the potential and ability of Incognito Mode, which they shouldn’t.

The private browsing mode may work if you automatically delete your browsing history, cookies, and data on your computer. But it doesn’t keep search engines, organizations, and workplaces from collecting your data.

Server-side will still contain all the data regarding the IP addresses of anyone who tries to access it. So, an Incognito Mode might be great if you’d like to avoid unnecessary advertisements, but it won’t help keep you anonymous.

Final Verdict

So, these are a few ways to hide your location if you want to do security research through your devices. While we find residential proxies most useful when obtaining information while staying anonymous, VPNs also work fine.

There is a great advantage of using a VPN since it masks all your device activity regardless of which app or browser you’re using. Tor is also a great option, but it slows down the server and isn’t as efficient as it should be.

Incognito mode is excellent for deleting your history and cookies, but it won’t be able to mask your activity as residential proxies and VPNs do. So, we hope this helped and you’ll be able to ensure your anonymity on the internet from now onwards.