What information can a person find by knowing your IP address?

Question

I just asked a question where after reading the answers I gotten, it makes me more worried since sending emails show the IP address of your computer. I don't want this person to know it's me and what to send an email anonymously without them knowing. But what types of information can they find and know from my IP address? What if I have put fake information on my email account?

Will they get that or the computer info? I really don't understand or know much about what an IP address is and would appreciate any other explanation as well to help clarify this question for me. thanks. I know I'll need to do more research btw. But seriously if someone can define what "IP address" is in simpler terms would be more helpful. I'm not very knowlegeble about the computer lingo stuff... thanks in advance./

Answer 1

All the information you can get is where your internet service provider is located.

I'm in regional Queensland, Australia, but my ISP is located in Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1350 km from where I am, but my IP address is shown as located in Sydney, where my ISP is.

Answer 2

SIMPLIFICATION

An IP Address is a way of identifying a computer on a network. Its like a postal address for network data. However There are differnet 'level's of network, Local Area Networks (LAN's) and Wide |Area Networks (WAN's). The computers in a single house would be on a LAN but would connect to an ISP via the modem/cable connection which in turn would connect them to the internet (Which is a WAN).



Depending upon your contract with the ISP you may have a static IP or a dynamic IP. static IP's do not change, you have specifically requested that it doesn't and pay for the privilege. This is usually used by businesses or people hosting their own Web servers. Dynamic IP's are more common and change at the whim of the ISP and can be "leased" for periods as short as an hr.



In most cases an IP address will only lead back to your ISP gateway. Unless the person has inside knowledge of the ISP's IP allocation table (i.e has access to the 'register' of users) that is as far as they will get. The police and other government institutions can get access with a court order but private individuals will not be able to do so. However if what you are doing is illegal then the police could be brought in. Which brings us to the question of why you want to do this anonymously?

Answer 3

Every internet connection is assigned an IP address by the company selling them the service. If you have 3 computers in a house, they would all have the same IP address because they are all using the same connection.



The IP address can tell others the city you live in, but nothing more detailed than that. Only your internet service provider has the information that ties your IP address to your specific location, and it's completely confidential.



If you make a fake email account, it will still have the same IP address since you're sending it from the same connection. If you want to totally fool them, you'd have to make a fake email address and then send the email from a computer in a different city (so that the IP would be very different.)

Answer 4

Every time you disconnect from the internet or turn your computer off you get a different ip address when you reconnect. So they can't find anything out. It's only offices that have fixed IP addressess, and then that's only the bigger companies.

All they can find out is the area you are in.



This is how adverts work that keep popping up on facebook and other sites, that have locations in them. e.g. dating sites .



Don't worry about it.



Your ISP (internet service provider) has a job lot of IP addresses for each area and its first come first served. If you disconnect the next person in your area that connects will probably have the same IP address.

Answer 5

You can find more about email tracking on:

http://www.ip-address.org/tracker/trace-email.php

http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/email-tracking/email-header.php

http://www.find-ip-address.org/email-search/find-email.php



You can even play with email tracking tools for yourself. Open any email into your mail box, copy/paste full email header and see what email trackers will show you about sender.



Hope this helps!