When I first started looking into encryption software online, my main desire was to hide my IP address online. This was driven by an article I had read that talked about the way that Google records every search that you do through their site, and also stores your IP address with this information. Google doesn't feel like it is doing anything wrong, and in fact argues that IP addresses shouldn't be considered personal information, as they do not link to a single person.

Personally, I disagree. After all, this hasn't stopped governments from using a person's IP address to track them down or to accuse them of doing things online. In fact, I know that in some parts of the world this has gone so far as to make people responsible for any activity that happens on their IP address. Under this perspective, it is completely irrelevant whether a person actually did what their IP address said they did, or not. This creates the potential for people to be framed for things that they did not do.

Now, this isn't the case in most developed countries, and theoretically people can only get in trouble for online behavior if it can be proven in a court of law. This is nice in theory, but doesn’t always work so well in practice. For starters, many lawsuits are settled out of court, because people do not have the money to fight a lawsuit and because the companies that are involved are more interested in making a profit than actually going through court proceedings.

When this happens, evidence like an IP address, which would not normally be good viable evidence in court, becomes relevant to the case. This is dangerous to the rights of the people involved, and means that they end up paying a fine for something they didn't actually do.

This is one of the reasons that I like using a VPN or a proxy to hide my IP online. I feel much safer when there is no way to associate my IP address with any online activity. I also find it very concerning the way that online sites have access to information about your IP address and your online activity. There are few laws that restrict how much information these sites can gather or what they can do with the information. I think that this is a significant problem, and that at some point this information will be used in a way that harms me.