Anyone who goes on the internet will have an IP address for his or her device. Over time, anyone can track you around the internet because of the number of places where your IP address is made available.
Many internet users know this, yet what is more concerning is how easy it is for other individuals to get hold of your IP address. If they take the time, it can be easy for them to trace IP address location using some straightforward tools.
Here you can see how to find someones IP address, and how you can put things to help prevent it from happening to you.
Things to Know About How to Find IP Address
If anyone thinks another person can’t find out what their IP address is, they are mistaken. It is relatively easy for any person to view and capture your IP address.
What any internet user should understand is:
Anyone with a small amount of technical understanding, computer know-how and using some easy to find tools and tricks can find out this information. It doesn’t need to be the government, a large company, copyright trolls to do this, and it is something your neighbour’s kid could do.
If you think it must be illegal, again you will be wrong. It isn’t, and they don’t need to have your consent. (Read How To Use Whatsapp Safely)
Why Would Someone Want My IP?
Here you can see why an individual or third party would want to find someone’s IP address.
Businesses: A business may want to know someone’s IP address so they can pass it through a lookup service to see where the individuals come from. It helps with ads and marketing. Country, state and city can all be found out from your IP.
Hackers: Breaking into systems or identity theft is big business. Your IP address helps them achieve this.
Streaming Services: It is your IP address, which stops you accessing US Netflix and BBC iPlayer
Government: Any law enforcement agency can subpoena your ISP, and they will need to hand over your physical address if they don’t know how to trace IP address to a location themselves.
Quick Ways How to Find IP Addresses
There are several ways you can find someone’s IP address. Here are quickest ways it can be possible.
Lending your device or computer: Anyone can borrow a computing device and visit WhatIsMyIPaddress.com to find your IP address quickly.
Wireless Networks: Anyone who hacks onto your home Wi-Fi router can quickly find out what your IP address is.
Web Server Logs: Every website you visit, you leave your Ip address. Website owners can check these to see which visitors keep coming back.
Chat Forums: If you join a forum, you may have a unique username, yet the forum admin can see everyone’s IP addresses.
Blog Comments: If you ever leave a comment on a blog, the blog owner only needs a few clicks to come up with your IP.
Social Media: While users can’t see each other’s IP’s, the site administrators will know your IP. Besides, if you click on an ad, then this captures your IP separately.
Messaging Apps: Your mobile device will use your phones IP for apps such as WhatsApp, Viber and others. They will be invisible to users, yet clicking on links in messages informs the website, and it will catch the IP.
Work Email: Work email headers can reveal your IP to savvy IT individuals.
Most Reliable Ways to Detect Someone’s IP Address
Using the Command Prompt
Any person with a computer can do this; it doesn’t take any special tools, just the know-how of the commands to type into the command prompt window.
- On your computer, open the command prompt
- On the screen type “ping” – space- “address of the website to trace”
- Hit Enter
If you do this right, you will have something like “ping www.google.com.”
Once you hit enter, it will display the IP address for Google.
To find an individuals IP on something such as Facebook, you need to be chatting to them.
As you chat, open the command prompt
Type in “netstat –an”
Using the netstat command shows you IP addresses of everything connected to your computer as you are online, including the IP of someone you are chatting to.
Using Email Headers
This method isn’t in use as much as it used to be as many email providers disabled this function, although there are still some email providers where you can use this.
Emails contain more than the message, and inside the headers is the information of where the email came from.
In Gmail, it used to be that you would check the headers next to the reply click ‘down arrow’. From there you need to click on ‘show original,’ and you will see the senders IP address in the email header.
Search Online
The scariest one of all is how you can find an IP address of someone online using websites such as https://whatismyip.live/
Here you can find many tools available to locate someone or check your IP for security purposes.
While it isn’t there to track other people, it can show you how easier it is than you ever thought possible.
To be sure, no one can track your IP; you should use a VPN service. These hide your IP and mask all your communications.
To see how well these work, head back to the whatismyip service. Check your IP before you begin your VPN client. It will show your precise location.
Start your VPN client and then select a country from the drop-down list. Refresh the page, and if your VPN is a good one. You should see the map change from one location to your new location based on your new IP address.
