Thoughts On Hide Your IP Address Software for online securety ?

[joeyboy]

Does Any one use Use Hide Your IP Address Software to surf anonymously to hide your IP address, secure your internet connection, hide your internet history, and protect your online identity ?

reviews of 2 of the bigest software brands here Hidemyass Software Review Surf The Internet Anonymously and here Hide My IP Address 5.3 Software Review

Whats your feed back on that sort of software? does any one hide behind proxy's when surfing for added online security ?? or you don't think its much of a big deal to have your IP logged or traced?

[downloads]

That depends on your IP. Mine can be changed at will and I do that every three days or so but I used to have a fixed IP for at least 6 months. The latter was more annoying- you have to protect it as it's as good as you home address.

Those services you mentioned sort of work but if I remember correctly they are very soft when it comes to handing over data to governments (Hidemyass handed over data to FBI making no effort to protect its user).

While I don't suspect you of doing anything that would interest FBI it begs the question is it even worth it?
If you can change your IP manually by disconnecting/re-connecting your modem I'd advise you to do so on regular basis rather than spend money on a sort-of-protection.

[BugOut Machine]

I honestly see no need for these types of services. If you really need to be anonymous online you can use the TOR network which is far from perfect but will certainly hide your IP. If you are concerned about having a static IP you can always contact your ISP to figure out an alternative. If you have a dynamic IP you can hard reset your modem for 12-48 hours. You can also use a VPN service at the consequence of slowing down your speed.

At the end of the day though I don't see a real life need to hide or change my IP address and would never pay to have it done.

[Geekz]

Not really to hide but to change ip address so i could test my network since my router doesn't support nat loopback, however the same principle is used to hide your IP when browsing (by hiding behind a proxy).

TOR browser
Lowerping software (subscription based but you can get 30 mins before needing to reconnect, so it's good for those quick proxy things).
Hotspot shield - almost the same as tor network i think.