What is your IP address?

What an IP address is

An IP address is the number of your connection on the internet. It exists so that the answer to a request comes back to you: the browser asks a website, the website sees the return address and sends the page there. Without such a number the network cannot work at all — it is addressing, not surveillance.

The address is handed out by your mobile operator or home provider. Most often it is dynamic: it changes when you reconnect, restart the router or move between cell towers. On mobile networks hundreds of subscribers often share one address at the same time. There are two kinds: the short IPv4 (like 203.0.113.7) and the long IPv6 (like 2001:db8::7). Your phone may use both at once.

What can be learned about you from an IP

The address itself holds no name, no phone number and no exact location. Public databases usually show:

• The operator or provider — whose range of addresses this is.
• The country and usually the city or region. The accuracy is modest: what is determined is where the range is registered, not where you are standing, and an error of hundreds of kilometres is ordinary.
• The type of connection — home internet, mobile network, data centre.

A website learns far more from the browser itself: language, screen size, fonts, time zone. That set is called a “fingerprint”, and it differs between people more than the address does. We store neither the address nor the fingerprint — what the service does collect is listed in the Privacy Policy.

One thing worth remembering: changing the visible address is not the same as “becoming unknown”. While you are logged into your mail or a social network, you are recognised by the account, whatever the address is.

How to check whether the address changed after connecting

The check takes half a minute and happens on this very page:

1. Open the page with the connection off and write the address down — that is your usual address at the operator.
2. Turn Mayak Networks on and wait for the “Protected” state.
3. Come back here and press “Check again”. The address must become a different one — it is the address of our server in the country you picked.

The address did not change? Usually one of three reasons: the connection did not really come up (the app does not say “Protected”); the page came from the cache — reload it with Ctrl+F5; or this app is sent around the tunnel in the exclusion list. A similar case is taken apart in “Connected” but nothing loads, and step by step — in the help centre.