You can change your IP until the cows come home, but the ISP is still going to use the same netblocks. When you change your address via whichever mechanism, you're still pulling an address in the same netblock. Using proxy servers works as long as you select one that you've tested to be anonymous , but beware, 99.9% of all proxies out there that people think are protecting their source address, add the following to the header: "X-Forwarded-for: x.x.x.x". The x.x.x.x would be you. The only way to hide your IP address and expect to receive a reply to your request is to use a truly anonymous http or socks proxy that you yourself have tested to be anonymous..... hitting a webserver who's logs you can see, and assuring the "X-forwarded-for:" field is not present in the header. Squid, the most common proxy on earth, is configured by default to NOT hide this header field, so you're probably not hiding as you suspect you may be.