How-to-hide-IP is an online anonymity guide that has dealt a lot with different hide IP tools. We’ve covered VPN solutions for unblocking popular websites like Hulu, Spotify and more. We also showed you how to use browser extensions so as to provide some IP hiding solutions. As if that were not enough, we’ve provided you useful information on different VPN services that are worth (or not) using. Learn how not use hide IP tools.
Ugly and bad things that can be done
To sum up, we’ve shown you the good (we think so) ways of hiding IP on the internet. However, from the same principles that we have shown you, some ugly and bad things can also be done from the internet. So here we’re going to cover some common bad uses of hiding IP services,
- Spamming: we all hate spams, don’t we. We’ve got enough genuine e-mails to deal with on a daily basis, so why bother considering spams. Unfortunately, spammers always find ways to get through us. In fact, they have some mass-mailing software where they load thousands of e-mail addresses. Usually, the e-mail server that they are using to relay those e-mail messages would end-up finding out that those are spams, so one of the counter-attacks they implement is to block the IP address of the mass e-mail sender. However, with the same techniques we’ve shown, that same spammer can “borrow” some other IP address from VPN servers, and resume flooding the internet with his unsolicited bulk e-mail.
- Banned forum and blog posting: this is another common situation that bothers a lot of people. Trolls, flames, or call it whatever you want are common on forums and blogs. It’s more than common to find the same user using different pseudo for flooding a forum with not-so-nice comments. Forum moderators and blog owners can usually identify them from the same IP address, hence they are able to ban that IP address from commenting. But here again, that solution can only block those commentators who are not aware of hiding IP tools.
In fact, we cannot deny people from reading a how-to-hide-ip blog and apply whatever they find here. And even if we find ways for limiting this, those spammers would always find some other online resources showing them how to do it.
Hide IP tools are affordable
Given that VPN services do not cost that much and are publicly available, chances are that it’ll be hard to catch those guys. So, instead, we have decided to educate our users on best practices for using hide IP tools (firstly, learn how to choose a hide IP solution). And the two scenarios we mentioned above are the things that should NOT be done with hide-IP tools. In fact, it’s not because it’s unethical to do so, but applying those same techniques for doing bad things can kill the public VPN service offering. How’s that?
In fact, if a lot of spammers are using VPN services for doing their bad things, website owners and server managers would ask for the VPN service provider’s class of IP addresses to be blocked from the internet: so it’s like those same spammers are biting the hands that are feeding them. Indeed, the spammer may not be caught, but if they use all the VPN providers, and all those VPN providers are blacklisted on the internet then that VPN industry would just die.
Your two cents
I know this article may sound like a wishful thinking, but I’m sure there’s a lot of good guys reading How-to-hide-IP who can spread the word. And, by the way, if you have suggestions on limiting those spammers/trollers using the tools we are recommending here, they are most than welcome in the comment section.