What will ip address tell you

IP addresses are not random. ICANN is a non-profit organization that was established in the United States in to help maintain the security of the internet and allow it to be usable by all. Each time anyone registers a domain on the internet, they go through a domain name registrar, who pays a small fee to ICANN to register the domain.

If you want to understand why a particular device is not connecting in the way you would expect or you want to troubleshoot why your network may not be working, it helps understand how IP addresses work.

Internet Protocol works the same way as any other language, by communicating using set guidelines to pass information. All devices find, send, and exchange information with other connected devices using this protocol. By speaking the same language, any computer in any location can talk to one another.

The use of IP addresses typically happens behind the scenes. The process works like this:. As the process implies, there are different types of IP addresses, which we explore below.

There are different categories of IP addresses, and within each category, different types. Every individual or business with an internet service plan will have two types of IP addresses: their private IP addresses and their public IP address. The terms public and private relate to the network location — that is, a private IP address is used inside a network, while a public one is used outside a network.

Every device that connects to your internet network has a private IP address. This includes computers, smartphones, and tablets but also any Bluetooth-enabled devices like speakers, printers, or smart TVs. With the growing internet of things , the number of private IP addresses you have at home is probably growing.

Your router needs a way to identify these items separately, and many items need a way to recognize each other. Therefore, your router generates private IP addresses that are unique identifiers for each device that differentiate them on the network. A public IP address is the primary address associated with your whole network.

While each connected device has its own IP address, they are also included within the main IP address for your network. Your public IP address is the address that all the devices outside your internet network will use to recognize your network. Dynamic IP addresses change automatically and regularly. ISPs buy a large pool of IP addresses and assign them automatically to their customers. Periodically, they re-assign them and put the older IP addresses back into the pool to be used for other customers.

The rationale for this approach is to generate cost savings for the ISP. There are security benefits, too, because a changing IP address makes it harder for criminals to hack into your network interface. In contrast to dynamic IP addresses, static addresses remain consistent. Once the network assigns an IP address, it remains the same. Most individuals and businesses do not need a static IP address, but for businesses that plan to host their own server, it is crucial to have one.

This is because a static IP address ensures that websites and email addresses tied to it will have a consistent IP address — vital if you want other devices to be able to find them consistently on the web. This leads to the next point — which is the two types of website IP addresses. These are shared and dedicated.

Websites that rely on shared hosting plans from web hosting providers will typically be one of many websites hosted on the same server. This tends to be the case for individual websites or SME websites, where traffic volumes are manageable, and the sites themselves are limited in terms of the number of pages, etc. Websites hosted in this way will have shared IP addresses. Some web hosting plans have the option to purchase a dedicated IP address or addresses.

This makes it easier to share and transfer files with multiple people within an organization and allow anonymous FTP sharing options. A dedicated IP address also allows you to access your website using the IP address alone rather than the domain name — useful if you want to build and test it before registering your domain.

Google will show you the answer at the top of the page. Other websites will show you the same information: they can see your public IP address because, by visiting the site, your router has made a request and therefore revealed the information. Generally, you will only receive an approximation of location using this technique — where the provider is, but not the actual device location.

If you are doing this, remember to log out of your VPN too. Obtaining the actual physical location address for the public IP address usually requires a search warrant to be submitted to the ISP.

If you need to check the IP addresses of other devices on your network, go into the router. How you access the router depends on the brand and the software it uses.

Generally, you should be able to type the router's gateway IP address into a web browser on the same network to access it. From there, you will need to navigate to something like "attached devices," which should display a list of all the devices currently or recently attached to the network — including their IP addresses. Cybercriminals can use various techniques to obtain your IP address. Two of the most common are social engineering and online stalking.

Attackers can use social engineering to deceive you into revealing your IP address. For example, they can find you through Skype or a similar instant messaging application, which uses IP addresses to communicate. If you chat with strangers using these apps, it is important to note that they can see your IP address. Attackers can use a Skype Resolver tool, where they can find your IP address from your username.

Criminals can track down your IP address by merely stalking your online activity. Any number of online activities can reveal your IP address, from playing video games to commenting on websites and forums. Alone, the IP address can't share much more about you than a generalized location of where you might be at a certain time. The trouble is, onlookers can in some cases look at the online activity associated with a particular IP address.

Then, they can stitch together a lot of information about the people or even a single person who's accessing the internet from that address. From there the researchers used a search engine to find details about the people who had used the internet via that network. The OPC also did a second experiment where it looked up the IP address of a person that had edited a Wikipedia entry these IP addresses are public , then entered that IP address into a search engine.

It got all kinds of information back, such as all the other entries that person had edited, and the fact that the person had visited an online message board related to sexual preferences.

The report explained that using these tactics it was not hard to get a "glimpse into the kind of portrait that authorities could be able to paint of individuals without needing to obtain prior judicial authorization. In other words, an employer can figure out a lot about the people who are using the internet from work. Or, in theory, your ISP could figure out a lot about the activities of its subscribers.

Or, an online advertising network could associate a particular IP address with a lot of online activity over time and use that to target advertising. With the help of the authorities, it is possible to discover more than just hearsay information. For instance, the OPC cites a case in the US where the authorities, knowing only the IP address, contacted the ISP and were able to find the identity of a person sending harassing emails.

They did this by receiving the exact locations where the emails were sent from the ISP. Then, the FBI got a warrant to investigate that person's email account. This does require a certain set of knowhow. While it's relatively easy to find out an IP address you can look up your own by going to websites like IP Chicken , finding real actionable information from it takes some finesse. But once you have that finesse, with a little bit of imagination, some creepy details may be discovered.

Above the search results, Google will immediately show your current IP address. On the surface, an IP address looks no more identifying than just a phone number.

However, just like how the internet allows us to trace a phone number to much more identifying information, your IP address actually tells quite a lot about you—including your location. For mobile devices, pinpointing an exact physical location is completely possible.

The best way to see exactly what your IP tells about you is to simply see for yourself. We recommend using an IP address data provider such as IPinfo. IPinfo has a page that you can navigate to and instantly see all of the freely available information about your IP address. This information may point to an area nearby, but nowhere near as accurate as GPS location data.

This is intended. Your IP address is far from private, and just about every single website or service you interact with online is going to use it in one way or another.

Should someone want to locate you, an IP address is something that can help confirm suspicions and search for more precise information. An IP address also puts you at risk of denial-of-service attacks, which can leave your internet connection stressed or completely disconnected for hours on end.

A VPN, or virtual private network, tunnels your internet connection through a proxy server so that your real IP address is only seen by the VPN provider. An IP address assigned by the VPN is what websites and potentially malicious users will see from your device.