One’s IP address serves as his means of identification online. To find out the major ways you can get someone’s IP address on the Internet and how to prevent your IP address from being detected online, read the article.
For many Internet users, they see no reason why they should worry about their own IP address or the IP address of another person on the Internet. Heck, many do not even know what the term IP address means – yet, it is incredibly important to the workings of the Internet.
Ad companies are out using them to their advantage, so are hackers and web services. It is important you know how one’s IP address can be detected by another person on the Internet. By knowing how one’s IP address is exposed on the Internet, you are a step ahead of knowing how to keep yours safe.
Interestingly, you will also learn how to keep your IP address hidden so that it is not revealed to those interested in having it. This gives you some level of anonymity compared to other Internet users that have their real IP address exposed. Before going into detail, we expect you already know what an IP address is. If you do not then read our IP Address 101 article.
Working Ways of Finding Someone’s IP Address Online
It might interest you to know that If web services have access to your real IP address, you will face some restrictions and limitations, for ad companies, you will become a major target of targeted ad that can be offensive to you, and for hackers – you know what it means – it is never a good sign. But how do these web services and persons on the Internet get access to your IP address? let take a look at some of the popular methods below.
Having Access to One’s Computer
One of the easiest ways of getting one's IP address is by using his computer. If you do not share the same computer with someone, you can simply borrow his computer. With the computer in your possession, you can use IP lookup tools such as the WhatIsMyIPAddress, or the IPLocation tool.
Using either of these tools or a simple search for “What Is My IP Address” on Google will reveal the IP address of the computer. While this method is the easiest and the most effective, not all computers are accessible to the person looking to get one’s IP address. in this case, you such person will have to use other methods.
Use One's Wireless Hotspot or Router
It might interest you to know that when you connect to the Internet via a router or any Hotspot (including smartphone hotspots), you won’t be accessing the Internet with your own IP address but with the IP address of the router.
This is because you are not connected to the ISP directly but using the connection of the router, and as such, you use the same IP.
Hackers use this to their advantage. All they need is to get the credential of one’s router if the router is secure and use their own computer to access the WhatIsMyIPAddress or the IPLocation tool, and the IP address of the person will be revealed.
Using IP Finder & IP Tracker
Social media platforms are some of the platforms that hackers can use to get one's IP address. From the introductory section of the article, you should know that web services have access to your IP address, and as such, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, and other social platforms have your IP address.
Regular users can’t access this – only employees with access rights can see this. However, users can trick other users into clicking links that will take them to a website that will help them pull out their IP address. Take, for instance, using an Instagram IP Finder such as the one described in this article; you can get Instagram users to reveal their IP address.
Aside from social media platforms, online discussion forums and blog comment sections are some of the places hackers use to get someone’s IP address. it follows the same procedure.
All they need to do is create trackable links from the Grabify tool or other IP logging service and trick readers into clicking on the link. If you click on this link, your IP address is sent to a database that the hacker has access to. Forum and blog admins can also see your IP address if they look at their log.
Looking Up Emails
One other method of looking up one’s IP address is looking at the email headers. It might interest you to know that some email services reveal one’s IP address in the email header, and you can use that to dig information about the sender.
Currently, not all popular email providers attached one’s IP address to emails he sends for privacy reasons. Take, for instance, Gmail does not provide such information. Instead of providing the sender's IP address, it provides its own mail server’s IP address. Some popular providers, including Outlook and Yahoo mail, make the sender's IP address available in the email headers. To learn how to get one’s IP address from emails he sent you, read this article on Lifewire.
By Sending emails with Web Beacons
For many, they consider this as a bug, but in reality, it is not a bug but provides hackers with a method to discover your IP address by just sending you an email. Immediately you open the email, your IP address is revealed to the sender.
This is achieved by embedding a piece of code within an image, and when the image loads as you open the email, your IP address is provided without you knowing. There are some web services that can help you achieve this – WhoReadMe is one of the popular options. You can prevent images and scripts from loading automatically in emails depending on the email service you are using.
Creating a Specialized Website for Collecting IP Address
If you are a coder, then you can create a specialized website developed specifically for collecting IP addresses from online users. The advantage over using an already made service is that you can customize it to your taste. You can have your own domain and hosting depending on how real you want the project to be.
Web users are increasingly becoming wary of shortened URLs, redirections, and pages that are deceiving for these reasons, hackers with web development knowledge could go a step further to make a site more convincing in other to make them have a better success rate without giving a clue.
By Using Social Engineering
If you are good at driving conversations and could get users over the Internet to do things willingly without suspecting anything, then you can get users' IP address free online. While it is actually dumb asking a user you meet online to look up his IP address and send it to you, you can use other means.
In fact, a good number of methods described above actually depends on social engineering. Take, for instance; people won’t just click on your IP grabber link without you convincing them to. It might interest you to know that social engineering is an important skill you should have as a hacker.
By Using the Command Line
If you use web services that connect you directly to other users either when chatting or playing an online game, then that person you are in direct communication to can access your IP address via the command line.
Gamers are susceptible to this kind of hacks so are Facebook users via the Facebook messenger or chat application. Below is the method used for getting one’s IP address via the command line.
- Establish a connection with the person either through a chat or by playing a game. While you are at the and the other person is active, close every other tab to avoid confusion.
- Launch the command-line tool and enter the “netstat- an” command and press enter,
- The IP address, together with other details, will be printed on the screen.
From Compromised ISP Employees
Your ISP is responsible for providing you IP address with which you use online. They have a record of all of the IP addresses assigned to you – not even the one you are currently using. This means that the best place to get your IP address detail is from your ISP.
Unfortunately, no ISP will willingly hand over the IP address of its customers to any other person except law enforcement agencies directed backed by a subpoena. However, depending on how important of a high-target you are, a hacker could hack a vulnerable employee, steal his data and threaten to make them public if he does not comply with their requests by providing him information about you.
There are many cases of compromised ISPs with their employee been the backdoor – some even do it willingly with financial reward.
How to Prevent IP Tracking
If you have read the whole of the last section of the article, you will know that one way or the other, your IP address is exposed either in the hands of web services you use, ad companies trailing you for advertisement purposes, or hackers with malicious intent. Whichever is the case, you can’t avoid using an IP address as it is an integral part of the Internet protocol.
However, you can provide a fake IP address in other to keep your real IP address hidden from prying eyes. By doing this, you have succeeded in preventing yourself from IP tracking. There are generally three ways you can get this done – VPN, proxy server, and Tor browser.
ExpressVPN, NordVPN,and SurfShark are some of the best VPN services.
For Proxies, I will recommend Smartproxy, Luminati, and Shifter.
FAQs About IP Address Finder
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What are the Advantages of Faking or Spoofing your IP Address?
Your IP address is your identity online. Now let me ask you a question – regardless of whether you are into something shady or not, do you splash your ID card or SSN on the face of everyone? Why then should your IP address be public?
You will need to fake your IP address to protect yourself against online surveillance and tracking. It is also useful for unblocking websites, carrying out automated tasks online, and access geo-targeted content.
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Why Should You Avoid Free Methods of Faking Your IP Address?
There is no free meal without a clause, and when it comes to faking your IP addresses – I will advise you to avoid using the free methods. This is not unconnected to the fact that free methods such as free proxies, free VPNs, and the Tor network are very slow. Some free methods would leak your IP address unknowingly – and some would invade your privacy.
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Can My Computer be Remotely Accessed Using My IP Address?
The answer to this is a yes and no – it depends on the skill of the hacker. Mind you; your IP address cannot be hacked – it is just a number and, in most cases, dynamically assigned to you.
However, a skillful hacker could scan your IP address in other to discover open ports. If you are using an outed Operating System, turned off your firewall, or do not make use of an anti-virus or anti-malware, then you can be vulnerable. If an open port is found, it could be used to gain access remotely.
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What Can Someone Do with Your IP Address?
IP addresses alone can’t be used for anything serious, but in conjunction with some tools and skills, they can be used to carry out serious malicious acts online.
Hackers could use IP addresses for carrying out DDoS attacks, prevent you from playing games online, find information about you, spam you with personalized ads, and add it to a database of IPs and sell it in on the Dark Web.
Conclusion
From the above, you can tell that except you hide your real IP address by spoofing it with a different one not assigned to your device by your ISP, you cannot run away from exposing your IP address. your device will always provide it to any web service it sends web requests to.
Unfortunately, your IP address is not only used for good things; the bad guys on the Internet could use it against you, and that is why you are supposed to use one of the methods described in this article to keep it hidden.
