When building your own vpn, how do you mask your ip?
You…don’t. If you’re hosting your own VPN its so external devices can connect & use your home network as if they’re directly on your home network. The external devices will have the same home IP address they get when they’re actually at the home location.
On your own VPN, you will be browsing with the IP of the the server hosting the VPN. Using a VPN service layers your traffic with other people’s traffic making at minimum very hard to discover it was you.
FYI, don’t trust the VPN websites that say your ip is “masked/protected/hidden” etc because its just a look up of the ip you are connect to that page with against a list of their own servers.
You can use xray trough cloudflare so only those who can connect to it know the real ip of the server.
If you login via a webpage, like at hotels, or open wifi networks without wifi key, it means that anyone can connect and see the traffic since it isn’t encrypted. If there is a wifi key, everyone logged in to that wifi can see all traffic.
That’s why you setup, or buy, a VPN server at another site so that you can connect to it and create an encrypted tunnel. The other ones on the same network, or the ISP, then can only see that there’s a tunnel but they have no idea what traffic you are creating inside of it without your encryption keys. You create a private net inside the other net with a VPN.
If you connect to a VPN node locally they will see everything you connect to after it, so it will be the same. What you want is a long tunnel to hide traffic for everyone in between. That is extra importand if you use public networks. It’s even better to use your own ISP or mobile since it’s at least protected from other users (hopefully).
If the authorities track down a location where bad online activities occur they often map the people near it because it’s such a common thing that people use a neighbors network and think they’re safe.
A VPN server that doesn’t collect any logs in a foreign country with good data laws is what I recommend.
so I guess I can just continue to connect from the library (thats how I get internet) or buy a wifi extender to connect to a local free wifi spot. I was thinking of placing a homebuilt vpn raspberry pi to use as a vpn , it would literally connect to the library!
Thanks!