What is an IP address

An IP address is a numeric identifier for a device on a network. Every packet on the internet has a source IP and a destination IP — without those, routing doesn't work.

There are two flavours in use today:

• IPv4 — 32 bits, written as four numbers like 192.0.2.1. About 4.3 billion addresses, which we ran out of years ago. Most of the internet still uses IPv4 with NAT (Network Address Translation) to share addresses across many devices.
• IPv6 — 128 bits, written as eight groups of hexadecimal like 2001:db8::1. Vast address space, growing adoption. Most home ISPs assign one.

You usually have at least two IPs at any moment: a private one (your laptop on your home network, like 192.168.1.42) and a public one (your home network on the internet, like the one your ISP gave you).

What your public IP reveals

Quite a lot, even though it's just a number:

• Rough geographic location. IP geolocation databases map IP ranges to cities and sometimes neighbourhoods. Streaming services use this for licensing. Ad networks use it for targeting. Anyone curious can use it to ballpark where you are.
• Your ISP. Comcast, Vodafone, Türk Telekom — the assignment record is public. So is the network type (residential, mobile, datacentre, hosting).
• A persistent identifier. Your IP changes occasionally, but for a session it identifies you uniquely. Cookies tie this to long-term identity; without cookies, the IP itself is enough for short-term tracking.

You can check your current IP to see what every site sees.

How a VPN changes your IP

When you connect through a VPN, websites see the VPN server's IP, not yours. Your real IP is still there — it's how the encrypted tunnel reaches the VPN — but it's only visible to your ISP and the VPN provider.

This shifts the trust boundary. Your ISP sees an encrypted blob to the VPN. The VPN sees your real IP and your traffic. The website sees the VPN's IP. So the VPN provider has to be trusted not to log your IP-to-traffic mapping; that's why no-logs policy matters.

What changing your IP doesn't fix

A different IP doesn't make you anonymous. Other identifiers stay the same:

• Browser fingerprint (canvas, fonts, screen size, plugins).
• Login cookies. Once you sign in to a site, the IP is irrelevant.
• Device fingerprint on apps with their own telemetry.
• Behavioural signals (typing rhythm, mouse movement) for sites that profile.

A VPN changes one identifier. It doesn't undo the others. For journalist-grade privacy, pair the VPN with browser hardening (Tor Browser, hardened Firefox) and login discipline.

DNS leaks reveal your IP path

Even with a VPN, DNS leaks can reveal your real IP through queries that bypass the tunnel. The VPN says you're in Frankfurt; your DNS query goes to your ISP in Istanbul; correlation is trivial. Test with the DNS leak test.

Try Fexyn free for 7 days and verify the IP swap works on your network.