How do I check my IP address?
If you are connecting via a VPN provider and you have access to the company VPN software that lets you see your IP address, then you can view it from the client's Connect tab.
Is this good for privacy or is my ISP sniffing my traffic or tracking my activity? It depends on what type of VPN you connect to: The VPN service that allows you to see your IP address is called IP View while the VPN service that hides your IP address is called IP Blacklisting. If you connect to a VPN to browse anonymously, then your ISP should not see you. However, if you connect to a VPN to browse using web applications you trust (for example banking or shopping) then your IP address will most likely be visible as it would be anywhere else in the world.
How do I avoid having my ISP sniff my traffic and track my activity? There are several ways you can browse with confidence and the best way depends on your needs. The most secure way is to choose a good VPN provider who encrypts your traffic. The benefit of this is that an SSL encrypted connection is completely transparent to the network and the people you are communicating with; even an expert cannot see what is being sent or received unless they have the private key or password to decrypt the traffic.
A less secure way is to choose a fast enough VPN that masks your location so that your ISP thinks you are browsing in a different country. This method also allows you to browse with great confidence but is less secure than using SSL.
A less secure method but one that is easy to use is to browse over a HTTPS encrypted channel which allows you to mask your IP but may not be secure. When the browser requests a page it will get a SSL certificate that indicates the browser is talking to a trusted server. However, the certificate itself does not indicate the identity of the website so you will have no way of knowing that you are accessing a secure web page unless you perform a man in the middle attack by installing an intermediate certificate.
There are numerous tools that will allow you to watch the SSL certificate so you can see if a page is secure or not. One of them is Comodo.
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