How do ISPs locate a PC of an internet user?

Question

Recently, one person was wrongly arrested by police based on false identiy given out by an ISP.

What is the exact process by which an ISP locates the particular PC from which a specific internet activity takes place.

Notmally, when we check the IP No.s shown in the headers of an email, we can find only the ISP to which the IP No. belongs.

But how do the ISP in turn exactly locate the PC used?

Under what circumstances can they make a mistake as they did in the above case?

Answer 1

ISPs need not to locate a PC (node), they always know where the node is located.



I am using a word "node" instead of PC because every device which is connected to internet network has its IP address and each device on internet is either a node or server.



Now consider if you are using land line phone (wired) for internet connection, then it is easy to locate your node because your ISPs server have a log of IP addresses which are provided to you for each internet session.



If you are using cellphone (GPRS, EDGE), then your ISP know about your location and cell No. because service provider knows, in which cell you are.



In both above case your no. is your identity and IP address provided to you for a specific session, which was later used for malicious activities, is a evidence against you.



In a straight line the ISPs server has a log of IP address provided to its client for Internet sessions.



A misatke can take place only when some one have hijacked another IP address. Or mistke may be humane instead of technical.

Answer 2

ISPs are the ones that allocate IP addresses to PCs. The IP in email headers etc contain the IP of an ISP because the email program only recorded the IP of the ISP because the email packets were passed through the ISP's proxy. So the email program can't get the IP address of the PC where the email was sent out.



But, the ISPs have the record of packets sent from your PC. The case where ther is a false identity is probably because, a neighbour PC taps on to your wireless connection. Thus, your IP range and the other PC's IP range will be the same.



Note: ISPs assign a range of IPs to your PC if you are using a wireless network. So each time you switch on a PC, the IP address may be different. But it alway points to the same Mac address. Mac address is the unique id on the modem. It can never be modified or stolen (as far as i know).

Answer 3

Every ISP is allotted a certain IP range for their customers. From the IP address assigned to the user, you can determine who their ISP is, what state and city they are in and possibly what part of the city. With access to the ISP records and servers, it can be determined who the IP address is assigned to by matching it up to the hardware address of their modem. From there a simple records search would give you the customer's physical address. If the customer is issued a static IP address through the Web consortium then you could do a search on various web sites and get the address and name of the owner of that IP address.

Answer 4

each Internet user has an ip address, this locates the region the computer is in. the service provider holds information such as how much has been downloaded, what sites have been visted and so forth using this address. If a user has been using the internet wrongly it is easy for the authorities to get in touch and ask for this information. however you can track a computer and its habits very easily so some users change their ip address to another one, this can in turn create problems as in this case, a legitimate users ip address was copied so when a trace was done it came back with a differant user.

Answer 5

I would guess that they either have the IP address associated with someone's street address or they look up an IP and try to figure out the location of the person that way, however I'm not sure about that.



Good luck and I hope I helped!

Answer 6

an ISP has small hubs around its area of service, they can determine which hub the signal is routed through, and that gets them in about 2-3 miles of the computer, there can be a few thousand comps in that area, because of schools and businesses, and the number of availible IP nimbers is... uh... about 10^10 power, so, 100000000000 possibilities. between that number and the number of comps they can get within, oh, 200 feet or so

Answer 7

there's something called a MAC ADDRESS that's unique to every system in the world. that's how they do it ppl, with the assistance of ip-filtering within the range of ip-addresses avlble to them.

Answer 8

think its to do with your IP adress find that and the ISP and youll have your computer...i think