Change your location: Your public IP address reveals your general geographic location, and changing your IP address can allow you to access geographically-locked content, like content from international streaming services.

So if you have a reason to be anonymous, changing your IP address can make your computer appear to be a different machine.

Protecting your security and privacy: Although it's rare that anyone would abuse it, your public IP address lets others find your general location.It's a mundane part of your computer's setup, and websites request and see it dozens (if not hundreds) of times each day.Įven so, there might be reasons to occasionally change your public or local IP address. Most people will rarely ever need to change their IP address. Here's everything to know about changing both your local and public IP addresses. It's rare that you need to know your computer's IP address, but should you need it, it's easy to find (for details, see our articles on how to find the IP address for Windows or the IP address on a Mac). It's a series of numbers interspersed with decimal points (for example, '198.169.0.101'), and acts like a home address that identifies where other devices can find your computer. Your computer, like every device that connects to the internet, has an IP (Internet Protocol) address.

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