Hi! I'm new here, so I hope I'm posting this in the right section.

I'm wanting to know if it's possible to hide or otherwise redirect my IP address for a specific application. It's a long story of drama as to why I wish to do this so I won't bore you unless asked for details, but this is for no illegal purposes. Basically I don't want my IP address available to members of an IRC network of people I chat with, but I don't want to have to go through an online host.  I'd rather use X-Chat or mIRC as these programs are familiar to me and easy to use.

I'm getting conflicting information in my research on this topic and I have found a few websites (paid, of course) that claim to be able to use a VPN to redirect my IP address for any application that connects to the internet. If I had my own VPN set up could I do this myself?

Thanks, and sorry again if I posted this question in the wrong place.