UKC

Being aware that an IP address can provide third parties with a lot of info about browsing etc I checked this morning and found that the IP address on my tablet is the same as on my pc.

Just wondering if it's possible to change one of them.

In reply to FesteringSore:

If you're concerned you can always use a virtual IP

Hola is free.

In reply to FesteringSore:

IP Addresses are not unique. If you are worried about your browsing then your browser should have a secure browsing option.

In reply to FesteringSore:

You'll have a private IP address in the internal or local network (LAN), one unique address for each device on the local network. And on a basic setup, a single external IP of the router which is the public IP of all the devices on the wider network (WAN).

You can change/mask the external IP for a single device by connecting through a VPN/proxy.

In reply to FesteringSore:
An IP address is assigned by your ISP (or other network owner). If you are connecting on the same home network then it will share the same outward facing IP (unless you have a fairly unusual and serious setup).
Its not actually as useful as it seems since NAT is increasingly in use by ISP which means multiple homes will share the same IP in the same way all computers on the local network do (just taking it to the next level).
If you are concerned about tracking then cookies and other storage (flash etc) are far more of a concern.

You can use a proxy server though to reroute your traffic.

In reply to Shani:

If you mean things like Chrome's incognito mode, then they're more about not recording history / caching pages on your local machine. They do nothing to conceal your IP address from the sites you connect to. The only way to do that is via some sort of external service, typically a VPN.

In reply to FesteringSore:


No its not. If it was they'd get each others messages and your network would break.

They most likely have different IP addresses assigned by your router within the subnet in your house. If you go on Windows shell and type ipconfig you'll see this unique local address. If you use a web service to show your IP address it won't see the device IP address it'll see the IP address of your internet router which is assigned by your ISP.

Usually this is a dynamically assigned address and if you reboot the router you'll get a new one.

In reply to FesteringSore:

How are you checking the IP addresses? If you're using a web site like myipaddress.com, and your tablet and pc are both connected to your home wifi router, then its perfectly normal for that site to show the same ip address on each device. Thats because the web site is just seeing the ip address that your broadband provider assigned to your router. All the devices connected to that router "hide behind" it and its ip address. They also have their own "local" ip address (usually 192.168.<something>.<something>) which is only valid on "your side" of the router. The router tells a device what local ip address to use when the device connects to it. This setup is called "network address translation" (NAT). Google "what is nat" for more info.

If, on the other hand, you're looking at the network adapter properties on each device and they have the same 192.168.x.y _local_ address then something is wrongly set-up. It might be that one or both devices have been specifically configured to use the same local ip address, or that the router has somehow allocated the same local ip address twice. This is unlikely though.

Hope thats useful,

Andy

In reply to FesteringSore:

https://xkcd.com/742/

In reply to Clinger:


Yeah, I know. I was point out a strategy to limit the OP leaking info to third parties on his browsing habits.