Hiding IP Address / Hostname in IRC / Jabber etc in Pidgin

I use Pidgin as a chatting software ( mostly for games I play ).

However my hostname is in there when I connect and for the life of me i cant figure out a method to completely hide / anom my information

any ideas? I guess I could proxy it, but not sure where to.

you would need to run your connection thru a proxy. thats the only way really, unless you have admin rights to the IRC server.

Some IRC networks provide this feature (it is normally enabled by default and can be disabled on-demand), but yeah, it has to happen on the server or you need to proxy your connection. The protocol specifies that your information be exposed.

Not so sure about Jabber, but I suspect it is similar.

If the IRC network doesn't provide a feature you can buy a shell account from a number of places online that offer a lot of virtual hosts....you just run a some BNC software and mask your hostname.