In order to protect your identity while surfing the Web, one of the most effective methods is to hide your IP address by using a fake one. Mask My IP changes your real IP into a virtual one in two seconds, thus allowing you not only to browse the Web anonymously, but also to send e-mails without revealing your identity and accessing sites restricted to IPs from specific countries.
Mask My IP comes in two flavors – a freeware and a Pro edition. The former will mask your IP effectively, though with restrictions. You won’t be allowed to make use of the “Select Fake Location” option – the program will assign a fake IP to your connection taken from one of its US-based servers, a limitation that won’t affect your Internet browsing much unless you wish to access sites with country-based restrictions.
A much bigger limitation affects both the free and the Pro versions of the program, and it refers to the browsers that you can use with this VPN solution. Mask My IP supports Opera, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, which all put together amounts to barely 25 % of today’s usage share of web browsers. Chrome, the most widely used browser among laptop and desktop users, and Safari, the preferred browsers for tablet users, are not on the list. This effectively limits the usage of this otherwise effective tool to a minority of Internet users.
In terms of usability, the software tool itself is very simple to operate. All you have to do is click on the “Hide IP” button – the program will assign you a fake IP from one of the servers allowed. If you want to make sure that your IP is protected right from the start, you can set the program to launch automatically at startup. You may also want to change your fake IP for a new one every X number of minutes, an option that Mask My IP offers you in both versions of the program.
All in all, this VPN utility delivers as advertised. If a fake IP from a US-based server is good enough for you, and if you don’t mind using one of the three browsers supported instead of Chrome, even the free version is more than enough to cover your true IP in an efficient and easy way.
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