What can you do with someone's IP address?

Question

Can you find where they live with their ip address or is it just a myth?

karoline · Accepted Answer

An IP address does give some clues about location, but it's not as precise as pinpointing someone's house or apartment.

What an IP address can do, though, is give a rough idea of geographical location. Websites use this to serve region-specific content, like showing you the weather in your city or making sure you're shopping on the right country site. Ever wondered how some sites just know what language to show you? Yep, IP address magic!

But here's where it gets techy: ISPs (Internet Service Providers) hold the keys to the kingdom. They know which IP address they've assigned to which customer. However, they're not just handing out this info to anyone who asks. There needs to be a really serious reason, like law enforcement with the proper paperwork, to dive deeper.

Now, about doing stuff with someone's IP address—most of what you hear floating around are myths or exaggerations. Sure, a hacker with enough skills and bad intentions might cause some trouble, like DDoS attacks (flooding your network to overwhelm it) or unauthorized access if they're really determined and you haven't kept your network secure. But for the average Joe? Not so much a daily worry.

MemeSupreme · Accepted Answer

yeah but peeps who do that got like programs they bought that do the work for them to do shit you can reset your ip easily tho just reset your router

dustybiker2 · Accepted Answer

If you check out sites that show your IP address. Even with a vpn some of those can see through a vpn.

patois · Accepted Answer

Most home networks are likely to have a dynamic IP address, meaning they are drawn at random from a pool of other IP address that belong tot he ISP and are assigned for temporary use. They might change once a week, once a day, or even once an hour. So you can't be certain you are even targeting their IP address. You are just targeting an IP from their ISP. That is if they haven't gone through an anonymous proxy or virtual private network to mask their identity. If they have done that then then they had added additional layers that you would have to attack to get closer to their real IP. But for all you know they might be on someone free wi-fi at a public location sitting in their car or be using a neighbors network and then you end up attacking some patsies network. An IP and an address, but it's not going to always lead where you think. For example if you grab my IP from my posts on this site at this very moment, you will thinking I'm roughly 3,000 miles from where I really am. If you attack the serve I'm going through that faces this site, you might get withing several hundred miles of me. Either way it doesn't lead to were I live.

genericname85 · Accepted Answer

if you have someones ip adress, the most you can know is where closest their isp server is located. so in most cases that's a very rough area, not even necessarily to the level of your accurate city of living. in certain areas, it can actually be accurate down to the district if you live in a big city with several isp servers. additionally you may find out their internet service provider.

"theoretically", you could be located right through to your exact adress but in order to do that, one would need have access to private customer information from the particular internet service provider, which the internet service provider does not hold as public information. that is privacy data, the isp is legally obliged to keep secret. they only have to grant access to certain authorities for the purpose of criminal investigations. a hacker won't get that information.

so the fbi for example could find exactly where you live from the ip adress. but a hacker won't. tho a hacker may also use social engineering techniques to figure out where you live using information you publicly provide on social media.

sawno · Answer

Depends on what's exposed, but the most harmful commonly available thing to do is a DDoS attack or location trace. Location traces aren't accurate in a lot of countries but somewhat accurate. Like perhaps, it picks a town in the same region. The DDoS attack depends on what the attacker has available. Home connections aren't fast so it doesn't take to much to knock someone offline, some kids do it all the time to win games.

If someone grabbed your IP-address the best thing you can do is leave the router unplugged for 10 minutes / overnight in hope your provider changed the IP in the meantime.

WindAtMyBack · Answer

You can find out the general location, but not the exact location. I don't know if that's true of all IPs though.

I assume that most people have dynamic IPs, meaning that it changes regularly. I turn my modem off every night because it forces a reset of the IP.

In the old days of multi-player games, the IP was used to connect two players. You exchanged IP addresses and entered it your game, and the game connected the two players.

I don't know if you can still do it, but there used to be a way in some instant messaging programs to get someone's IP without them knowing. When sending text, you would wait for them to send an emote, which is a small graphic. I don't remember how to do it from there, but somehow you could use the emote to get their IP. It might have contained meta data or something. I know it worked with the old MSN messenger (which was replaced with Skype).

Summeroflove · Answer

It just depends really. What movies and real life depict are different things. Sometimes television mimics reality but isn’t always accurate.

A Internet Protocol (IP) is rented out by Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and your ISP is really the main source of information. If someone has a VPN or something like that getting someone’s IP address or a proxy sever may not give someone’s location, but it can.

Many times if a law enforcement agency needs someone’s information they will go to thier internet service provider. You’ll notice such as your mobile phone your IP will change if you switch ISP’s. Such as if your home internet is one service provider and your cellular service is another. When you go from WIFI to Cellular your IP will change.

There is also a such thing as your GPS location. So there is a lot of different things that if someone has access to it can see where you are and into what you’re doing.

AaronKrieger · Answer

Just use a VPN and do not click on suspicious links, then you will be fine. Someone can get your IP and find out information about you, but it is not the end of the world. Also, like another said, you can just reset your router to reset your IP.

Often someone getting an IP of something is annoying if they're trying to DDOS something, which is usually targeted towards a company - not an individual.

_no_one_ · Answer

Some access points dont require authentication so your IP is the key to them especially home networks, with IP anyone can mask your identity and stuff basically invading the whole network. Other than that your identity throughout internet activity can be track, they'll know it's you.

jshm2 · Answer

Anything you like from DDOS attacks to fraud and taking over the machine.  This is why VPN's and securing services are hot at the moment.

exitseven · Answer

You can lookup a business by IP. A private citizen , not really. You may be able to find who their ISP is

worldscolide · Answer

Lol not much at least with mine, but I run permanently via multiple site to site vpn's.. And it changes every hour. So right now it says I'm coming from Thailand, an hour ago it was Canada, an hour before that it was Texas.. And so on..

laly520 · Answer

it isn't hard to get it  not much to do with but possible to get some data

Flatmanlewis · Answer

Depends on your level of access to investigative resources.

zagor · Answer

Depends on if it is a fixed IP or dynamically allocated, the latter being the way most providers assign IP's.

CuriousMufuxka · Answer

2006 called and said jack shit. Dynamic IP's really don't play the part in what can't be discovered. ISP's do though..

bobalife · Answer

Who you tryna stalk? 🤣🤣

JayBones · Answer

Nothing. It's behind 12 skeletons

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