ip-shield

Similarly to a city infrastructure with roads for traffic and homes with addresses for people, the Internet is a conglomerations of computers, each with a unique address, with traffic flowing through specific connection types. Your computer's basic public address is represented by the IP, which can be changed with applications like ip-shield, for security reasons.

The application comes in a very light package, with only little effort required on your behalf from the moment you launch the installer until it's fully up and running. The interface is compact and you only need to keep it up to configure connection settings, otherwise it silently sits in the system tray.

Status is displayed so you can view whether or not the connection is active, your computer's new IP address, as well as traffic flow and total running time. You need to be connected to your account in order to secure your IP, and this is done by filling in the dedicated fields in the main window.

The application gives you the possibility to choose one of the preset locations to simulate a connection, thus tricking websites and other services that require your IP into believing your location is the one you chose.

You are also able to manually configure a location simply by imputing a custom IP, but you have to make sure it is not already in use, which is slightly difficult to determine. If you're happy with your new connection settings, the application can be set to launch at startup to protect your privacy. For enhanced security, there's the possibility to use a proxy connection, but you are limited to Internet Explorer settings.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that ip-shield is not necessarily the best of its kind, with little configurations available. However, it's simple and straightforward enough to allow anyone to easily accommodate and establish a secure connection while navigating on the information superhighway.