Dedicated IP
Yes and no — VPN IP addresses can be used for both good and bad actions. Examples of good actions would be accessing a corporate office network, anonymous web browsing, and protecting privacy online. However, since VPNs do hide your real IP address and location, cybercriminals and bad actors like to use these connections to engage in fraudulent activity such as credit card chargebacks, creating fake accounts, generating click fraud, and similar behavior. Users abuse VPNs and proxy connections more often than using this technology for good faith actions.
VPN Detection — IP Address Check
Use this tool to perform a VPN detection test on any IP address. Lookup any IP addresses that recently allowed VPN usage activity or functioned as a Virtual Private Network. 99.9% accuracy for testing VPN IP addressees. Easily add real-time protection from proxies, TOR, and VPNs using our VPN detection API. VPN detection data is powered by the IPQS proxy detection service.
Integrate The VPN Detection API On Your Website
VPN IP addresses are just a small part of IP addresses that can cause problems for your business. IPQS proxy detection provides an easy solution for detecting all kinds of bad IP addresses including Proxy, VPN, and Tor connections. Did you know that VPN detection software can be added directly to your site? Simply upload a bulk IP address list or view the VPN detection API documentation to get started.
IPQS VPN detection tools are accurate for any country and includes VPN server detection for IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses. Confidently detect any VPN connection including those from major providers like NordVPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access, SurfShark, etc.
Recent VPN Detection Tests
What is a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?
A VPN creates an encrypted connection from a single device to a larger virtual private network, typically powered by one or more web servers. Traffic and internet browsing passed through the VPN encrypts data so that it cannot be intercepted by a government or ISP, or anyone else monitoring. This creates a more secure browsing environment while also preventing any websites from seeing browsing history from your actual IP address.
Why Are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) Used?
VPN networks are very popular among corporations and are usually the preferred way for employees to login to a corporate network, due to security concerns. VPNs are growing in popularity with individuals and personal browsing as well. Censorship and crackdowns in authoritarian countries have made it difficult for users to reach many popular websites, including Google. Tunneling your traffic through a VPN IP address would allow an individual to bypass any restrictions from their government or ISP.
Are VPN Connections Considered Bad?
Yes and no — VPN IP addresses can be used for both good and bad actions. Examples of good actions would be accessing a corporate office network, anonymous web browsing, and protecting privacy online. However, since VPNs do hide your real IP address and location, cybercriminals and bad actors like to use these connections to engage in fraudulent activity such as credit card chargebacks, creating fake accounts, generating click fraud, and similar behavior. Users abuse VPNs and proxy connections more often than using this technology for good faith actions.
How to Detect VPN IP Addresses?
Enable real-time IP fraud scoring on your site with the VPN detection API documentation. IPQualityScore maintains the most accurate database of VPN providers, including new proxy servers and nodes that are added each day. By querying our API or processing a list of IP addresses, it’s very easy to accurately check if IP addresses belong to a VPN provider. The VPN IP address can also be analyzed for risk analysis, location, behavior history and similar data.
VPN Detection API Coverage
The IPQS VPN detection API ensures enterprise-grade accuracy for identifying popular VPN providers as well as signatures aligning with a private VPN server. This typically includes data centers, hosting providers, similar infrastructure which can power a VPN connection. Similarly, the API can also identify proxy servers, web proxies, and other anonymous IPs.
Dedicated IP
A dedicated IP (Internet Protocol) is a unique IP address only you can use. Every time you connect to your designated VPN server, you get the same IP address. Just like that, you get the protection of a VPN connection & a fixed IP address.
Benefits of our Dedicated IP
Works with all connection protocols
You don’t have to choose between website speed and a fixed IP. Our Dedicated IP works with all our protocols, even WireGuard®, for maximum speed.
Protects all your connected devices
All your devices can share the same IP address & have VPN protection with Surfshark’s Dedicated IP. We don’t limit the number of connected devices.
Secures manual connections
You can download Surfshark Dedicated IP configuration files for manual connections, including your router or other internet-of-things devices. We’ll take care of the speeds.
Stops others from abusing your IP
You can’t guarantee others’ actions using a shared VPN server. With Dedicated IP, you won’t have to worry about that or others getting an IP blocked on some services.
Provides privacy as you want it
Your Dedicated IP is tied to your email, which means it’s a bit less private than a shared IP. Select the anonymous option after installation if you want to remove the link between your Dedicated IP and email. And just like that, even we won’t know which IP is yours.
Eases accessing remote networks
Accessing networks remotely with a shared VPN server is tricky since you never know what address you’ll get whenever you connect. That’s not an issue with a dedicated static IP.
Helps to avoid annoying captchas
When many people share the same VPN server, websites might identify their requests as robotic & you can get more CAPTCHAs. Our fixed IP solves that.
Improves access to IP-sensitive websites
Some websites are sensitive to IP changes & won’t work if you’re using a VPN. Dedicated IP resolves that since your IP stays private & always the same.
Dedicated IP vs. shared IP
The main difference between dedicated and shared IPs lies in the number of people that use them. A fixed IP is assigned & used by only one user, while an unlimited number of people can use a shared IP. A shared IP address gives you a random IP every time you connect, while a dedicated one will give you the same IP. Both types of IPs are equally secure. However, dedicated IP goes a step further:
Reduces CAPTCHAs
By using an IP that’s just for you, you won’t be flagged as suspicious or made to do annoying checks.
Avoids IP blocklists
Avoid the “bad neighbor effect”, where activity by other users on the same IP can get you blocked.
Eases transactions
A Dedicated IP address is like your very own VPN connection that no one else can use.
Our Dedicated IP locations
We offer Dedicated IP addresses in these locations: the United States — Los Angeles, the United Kingdom — London, the Netherlands — Amsterdam, and Germany — Frankfurt. Location availability can change.
How to change your IP address with a VPN (and why you should)
Your IP address can be a gold mine for invasive advertisers, as well as thieves, hackers, and other bad actors. We’ll explain why it’s so sought after, and how you can protect your IP address by using a VPN.
Written by Michael Gariffo, Staff Writer on Jan. 20, 2023
Reviewed by Alyson Windsor
What is an IP address?
An IP (or Internet Protocol) address is what devices across the internet use to find each other when they need to connect. Just about everything on the public internet has an IP address assigned to it, just like every home and business has a street address.
Where street addresses help you find a physical location on a map, connected devices can use IP addresses to find and connect to a device on the Internet.
For endpoints like your home’s broadband, an external IP address is assigned by whichever ISP (Internet Service Provider) you subscribe to.
The ISPs themselves draw from pools of available IP addresses assigned to them by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), a division of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Because of this system, several things can be determined by looking up a given IP address.
These include the ISP that manages that IP address – Verizon’s Fios or Comcast’s Xfinity, for instance – as well as the physical location of that address’ current user, usually to within a radius of 25 miles or so.
ZDNET Recommends
The IP addresses in use today come in two forms: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 is an older format that’s still the most commonly used for home networking equipment. An IPv4 address usually looks something like 192.168.1.1 (a common internal IP address used by home modems and routers) or 142.241.40.100 (a public IP address Google was using at the time of writing).
IPv6 addresses use much longer, alphanumeric strings, like 2001:db8:3333:4444:5555:6666:7777:8888. This more complex set of characters can support far more addresses, helping to future-proof the internet against the rampant, ongoing growth of connected devices.The average home or small business user remains relatively unlikely to need to know much about this newer protocol, at least for now.
Why would I want to hide my IP address?
The short answer is to protect your security and privacy. Anyone can use publicly available IP lookup tools to find both your ISP and your general physical location.
On the irritating side of things, your IP address provides an way for invasive advertisers to bombard you with localized ads and to tie any collected browsing data to your IP to help track all of your activities.
Some folks may have stronger motivations to hide their IP addresses. This includes people living under repressive regimes that could use an IP address to hunt down political opponents, people escaping from abusive relationships, and anyone else who fears they could be targeted by malicious individuals that would love to get their hands on a physical location.
Identity thieves would also love to get their hands on this info to further exploit whatever data they may have on their target.
Even if you don’t fall into these categories, determined hackers can exploit your IP address to access your home network and anything connected to it, especially if you haven’t properly secured your equipment.
In addition to the safety and privacy concerns mentioned above, a new reason to hide your actual IP address has arisen in recent years: geographic streaming restrictions.
Many streaming service providers will limit which geographic markets can stream which content, due to licenses to stream shows in some countries but not others, and obstacles like sports broadcasting markets.
Many people choose to circumvent these geographic restrictions by using a VPN (explained in more detail below) to show the streaming provider’s systems an IP address from a compatible country or region.
Most decent VPNs provide several geographic locations to choose from. Selecting one in the correct locale broadens what can be streamed via services you’re already subscribed to and helps avoid pesky broadcasting blackouts that are mostly holdovers from the days of antenna-based TV.