How To Hide Your Location (IP Address) When Working Remotely • Indie Traveller

What if you wish to work remotely from someplace that isn’t your own home, however you’re unsure your boss will allow you to?

Well, the wise factor is to debate the chances together with your firm. But for those who desire to simply let sleeping canines lie, then you might select to work remotely from wherever whereas hiding your location.

While I’m not particularly recommending this, I’ll be sharing a number of methods right here to keep up your privateness whereas working from wherever, whereas trusting you to conform together with your firm laws.

As a journey blogger, I’m fortunate to have the ability to work for myself. But I’ve shared work journeys with buddies whose employers with ambiguous distant work insurance policies. Determined not to attract the Eye of Sauron of their company head workplaces, my buddies wished to ensure their IP deal with wouldn’t reveal their true location, so I helped them arrange some options.

To be clear: sure, it is doable that your boss (or whomever) is watching you. Using your IP deal with (a collection of numbers with dots), somebody can simply hint your location when you’re logging in from out of workplace.

But… there are additionally methods of creating this unimaginable.

3 options to maintain your privateness

The three options listed right here all depend on VPN know-how. A VPN enables you to entry the web by a secured encrypted connection that may be routed by way of a server wherever on this planet.

Think of it as making a secret tunnel by the web out of your machine to an endpoint someplace. To anybody taking a look at your exercise on-line, they gained’t see the place you’re tunnelling from, they’ll solely see the placement the place it popped out.

For instance, I may very well be bodily in Belgium, however use a VPN connection to make it seem like I’m within the UK. 

Public vs personal VPNs

The first two options beneath contain utilizing a public VPN. This is by far the best to arrange, nevertheless it’s not at all times 100% watertight.

While your actual location might be hidden, the truth that you’re utilizing a VPN will nonetheless be seen. So somebody won’t be capable of ask you, “hey, why are you logging in from Hawaii?”, however they may nonetheless ask you, “hey, why are you using a VPN?”.

I imagine the probabilities of getting that query are nonetheless fairly slim, however a very nosy IT division is likely to be holding monitor of public VPN servers.

Only the third resolution (utilizing a personal VPN) might be utterly foolproof in supplying you with whole privateness.

Solution 1: use VPN software program

Difficulty: straightforward

The best strategy to masks your location is to make use of VPN software program.

All this takes is putting in an app in your laptop or your cell machine and subscribing to a month-to-month VPN subscription.

The cause that it’s a paid service is that encrypting and rerouting your web connection takes loads of assets. While there are a few free VPNs on the market, they’re sometimes very dangerous and offer you very sluggish connections.

Personally, I’ve used ExpressVPN, Tunnelbear, and NordVPN. I like NordVPN essentially the most by far because it’s extremely reasonably priced whereas providing excessive speeds and tons of areas. When utilizing their VPN, I’ve simply had a number of video streams operating concurrently (e.g. Zoom and Netflix) with out subject.

How to make use of a public VPN:

1. Create an account and subscribe at NordVPN.
2. Download the app on your machine or browser 
3. In the app, choose a location from which you need to seem

I like to recommend utilizing the app on your working system (e.g. Windows or MacOS) and never one of many apps that works together with your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and so forth.). That approach it is going to handle your whole web connection and never simply your browser exercise.

Using this VPN software program will make sure that nobody can know your actual location by checking your IP deal with.

Solution 2: get a journey router

Difficulty: straightforward/reasonable

There could also be conditions the place you need to use a journey router on your VPN as an alternative.

For instance:

• If you need to share the identical VPN connection throughout a number of gadgets (laptop computer, telephone, and so forth.)
• If you’re touring with different individuals who additionally need to use the VPN
• If your work laptop doesn’t can help you set up any apps
• If your organization already makes use of a company VPN (you possibly can’t have two VPNs on the similar time on the identical machine)

When I went on a distant work journey with some buddies, a few of whom didn’t need their location recognized to their employers, I bought a small journey router that works seamlessly with my NordVPN subscription.

I purchased this GL.iNet GL-AR300M Mini Travel Router. It was solely 30 Euros (about $35 USD) and but it did all the pieces it wanted to do and not using a hitch.

You can see how small it’s within the image above, the place it’s sitting subsequent to the broadband router of the Airbnb we had been staying.

This tiny router can go surfing to any WiFi sign (or LAN cable connection), encrypt it by way of VPN, after which make this secured connection accessible by way of its personal WiFi sign.

Setting it up takes a number of extra steps, nevertheless it’s not too sophisticated. Here’s easy methods to do it:

1. Get the GL.iNet 300M mini router at Amazon (if it’s out of inventory, strive the GL.iNet Creta)
2. Plug it into the charger utilizing the USB cable
3. Log onto its WiFi sign (the small print are printed on the again)
4. Go to the deal with http://192.168.8.1 in your browser
5. Follow these directions to arrange NordVPN 

When you’ve accomplished the setup, you possibly can have any of your gadgets related to this journey router. All connections will seem to return from the placement you choose in NordVPN. If you utilize this journey router, there isn’t any want for any apps.

Can you utilize this if your organization already has a VPN? Well, it relies upon. While utilizing this setup my pal, who works at a significant multinational company, was capable of log in simply wonderful to their firm VPN and NordVPN on the similar time. However, utilizing two VPNs without delay isn’t at all times assured to work, so if that is your scenario I do advocate testing this out earlier than you go off to some far-flung vacation spot. 

Using a journey router has some extra benefits. For occasion, it additionally acts as a WiFi sign repeater, which may help guarantee a strong connection at your distant work location. One trip residence I stayed at had good WiFi downstairs however poor WiFi upstairs; by inserting the journey router close to the steps, the web now reached each areas.

The GL.iNet 300M journey router can even connect with 4G or 5G for those who plug in a USB SIM card adaptor. That’s good to have as a fallback possibility ought to the WiFi in your distant location allow you to down.

Solution 3: arrange a personal VPN

Difficulty: laborious (however straightforward for those who get MaintainYourHomeIP to do it for you)

If you actually need to have most privateness whereas working from wherever, then that is the last word resolution.

By utilizing a personal VPN, it is going to really appear like you’re logging in from your own home. And it gained’t be apparent to anybody that you’re utilizing a VPN. 

Even a really savvy IT division gained’t discover something completely different out of your regular exercise.

Setting up a personal VPN is actually fairly sophisticated, which is why I’ve by no means finished it on my own. You’ll needn’t one however two of these GL.iNet routers (or related) and also you’ll must know a bit about community administration to arrange the configurations on your own home router.

But there’s now a service that does this all for you which ones I like to advocate. I used them just lately and all the pieces simply labored completely. It lets you work from wherever whereas tunnelling your connections by way of your own home after which again onto the web. Anyone checking your connection will simply see that you simply’re logging in from residence. 

First, I obtained these small GL.iNet routers from MaintainYourHomeIP:

I then had a quick assist name with them the place they remotely arrange my residence web router in order that it may well securely cross by the connection.

You can take a look at their service packages right here, which have the benefit of being only a one-time set-up price, and never an ongoing subscription. For most customers, I imagine their least expensive package deal (Economy Light) might be completely wonderful. Another benefit of this service is that it’s extremely prone to work even when your organization already has a VPN (although I like to recommend testing it first).

I wrote a extra detailed submit with my experiences utilizing MaintainYourHomeIP in addition to step-by-step directions on easy methods to use it.

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So there you could have it, 3 ways to maintain your location hidden whereas working remotely.

I printed the unique model of this submit through the early days of the pandemic when it went crazily viral. I suppose lots of people had been having the identical drawback that I had. I’ve since up to date this submit to incorporate the extra superior resolution of a personal VPN.

Do please take into account that I’m only a man sharing what’s labored for me! I can’t provide any sort of tech assist as that’s past my stage of experience. I’m simply telling you my experiences as a subscriber to NordVPN and having used completely different journey router setups. If you could have any questions you possibly can go away a remark beneath, although be mindful I can’t assure that I’ll know all of the solutions, particularly if it’s a particularly technical element. If issues are proving a bit too technical for you, I like to recommend utilizing MaintainYourHomeIP as they provide devoted assist.

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