Your IP address is one of the most basic pieces of information you expose every time you go online. A VPN changes it — but understanding how and why helps you use a VPN more confidently and troubleshoot it when something seems off.

What Is a Public IP Address?

Every internet connection is assigned a public IP address by your internet service provider (ISP). It's a numerical label — something like 88.223.41.17 — that identifies your connection on the internet. Think of it as a return address: websites use it to send data back to you, and in the process, they learn roughly where you are.

From your IP address alone, a website or online service can typically determine:

• Your country
• Your approximate region or city
• Your ISP (the company providing your connection)

This information is available to every website you visit, every app you use, and every online service you connect to — without you doing anything to enable it. It's simply how internet routing works.

What Happens to Your IP Address When You Use a VPN?

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server operated by the VPN provider. All your internet traffic flows through that server before reaching its destination.

The practical effect on your IP address:

Without VPN:

Your device → Website
Website sees: your real IP (e.g. Lithuania, Telia Lietuva)

With VPN:

Your device → VPN server → Website
Website sees: the VPN server's IP (e.g. Netherlands, VPN provider infrastructure)

Your real IP address is never exposed to the destination website. Instead, the VPN server's IP is what the outside world sees. This is the core mechanism by which VPNs provide location masking and identity separation.

What Exactly Changes — and What Doesn't

When you connect to a VPN and check your IP, here's what will and won't be different:

The most important thing to understand: a VPN changes what the destination sees, not who you are on a device level. If you're logged into Google, Google still knows it's you — your IP change doesn't override that. IP masking is one layer of privacy, not a complete anonymity solution.

Why Your IP Might Not Appear to Change — Even When Connected

Sometimes a VPN appears to be connected but your IP lookup still shows your real location. There are a few possible explanations:

The VPN tunnel didn't fully establish. Some apps show a "connected" state before the tunnel is fully active. Waiting a few extra seconds and refreshing the lookup resolves this.

A split tunnel is active. Many VPNs offer split tunneling, which routes some traffic through the VPN and some directly through your real connection. Your lookup tool might be accessing the internet through the non-VPN path.

IPv6 leak. Most VPNs handle IPv4 traffic but some don't fully cover IPv6. If your ISP assigns you an IPv6 address and your VPN doesn't tunnel it, your real location can leak through that channel. Look for a lookup tool that shows both your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

DNS leak. Even if your IP is masked, your DNS queries might still go to your ISP's servers, revealing which domains you're visiting. This is a separate issue from IP leakage and requires a DNS leak test to check.

How to Check Whether Your IP Has Actually Changed

The simplest approach: visit an IP lookup tool before connecting to your VPN, note your IP and location, connect, then reload the page. If the IP has changed to one matching your chosen server location, the VPN is working.

Several tools exist for this. They differ mainly in how much technical detail they show and how they source their geolocation data:

check-host.net/ip-info — The most thorough option for VPN verification specifically. Rather than pulling from a single geolocation database, it queries several simultaneously — MaxMind, DB-IP, IP2Location, IPInfo, and others — and shows you what each one says. This matters because geolocation databases update on different schedules, and a VPN provider's newly provisioned server IP might be mapped correctly in three databases but still show an old location in a fourth. Seeing the full picture makes it much easier to distinguish a real problem from a stale database entry.

whatismyip.com — Shows your public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses with ISP info. Clean and simple, good for a quick check.

ipleak.net — Specifically designed for VPN users. Checks for DNS leaks and WebRTC leaks alongside your IP, which makes it more thorough than a basic IP lookup.

browserleaks.com/ip — Shows both IPv4 and IPv6 alongside browser-level identifiers. Useful if you want to see the fuller picture of what a website can detect about you.

dnsleaktest.com — Not an IP lookup but an important companion check. Tests whether your DNS queries are leaking outside the VPN tunnel even when your IP appears masked.

A few things worth knowing about these tools: geolocation data is never perfectly accurate. The databases that map IP addresses to physical locations are maintained by third parties and updated on varying schedules — some weekly, some monthly. This means a VPN server's IP might be correctly identified in one database but show an outdated location in another. If you see inconsistent city-level results across different lookup sites, that's usually a database lag issue, not a VPN problem. Country-level accuracy is generally reliable; city-level is approximate.

Why Google's "What Is My IP" Result Isn't Ideal for VPN Checks

When you search "what is my IP" in Google, it shows your IP address at the top of the results. This is convenient for casual use but has a few limitations for VPN verification:

• It pulls from a single detection method with no cross-referencing
• It doesn't show your ISP name, ASN, or network details
• It doesn't test for IPv6 or DNS leaks
• The geolocation data may lag behind VPN infrastructure changes

For a quick sanity check it's fine. For actually diagnosing whether a VPN connection is behaving correctly, a dedicated IP lookup tool gives you substantially more information.

What a VPN Doesn't Change About Your Online Presence

It's worth being clear about the limits of IP masking, because VPNs are sometimes marketed as doing more than they actually do at the IP level.

Changing your IP address does not:

• Log you out of accounts or hide activity tied to those accounts
• Remove cookies or browser history already on your device
• Prevent browser fingerprinting (your browser's combination of settings, fonts, screen size, and other attributes can still identify you uniquely)
• Hide traffic metadata from the VPN provider itself — they can see you're connected, even if they don't log what you browse
• Guarantee anonymity if you voluntarily identify yourself on a website

IP masking is a meaningful privacy measure for hiding your location from websites and services. It isn't a replacement for other privacy practices.

TL;DR

• Your public IP address reveals your approximate location and ISP to every site you visit
• A VPN replaces your real IP with the VPN server's IP — the destination sees the server, not you
• Use a dedicated IP lookup tool (not just Google) to verify the change; check both IPv4 and IPv6
• Also run a DNS leak test — IP masking alone doesn't guarantee your DNS queries are private
• A VPN changes what websites see about your connection; it doesn't make you anonymous

Want to test this yourself? Connect to Octohide VPN — free, no registration required — and run through the checks above.