What exactly does this caution about my IP address mean?

Question

I am wanting to post on a forum. Nothing new there, as I belong to several, everything from medical to musical forums where you are anonymous and have a screen name.

In a recent forum I wanted to register at/ join, it prompts for a screen name, your email address, etc. just like any other forum. However, this one says in the "terms you agree to" print that "if you are afraid someone can identify you by your IP address, don't post!" I have never seen that in any forum agreement before. It is a legal advice forum but not sure that matters. I looked up the definition of an IP address and it says it is "like your street address." Not very helpful. If it is that specific, how is that (ones IP address being known) any different than posting my email address?? Can someone please explain if it is that detailed? How would anyone find out who I was? etc. I need legal advice and would not want anyone I know, or don't know, to know the details I need to give.

Thanks in advance to all you computer wizards that answer on here. I've learn so much of what little I do know from all of your answers.

Answer 1

When you send any information using the internet one of the pieces of information sent is your IP address. This really is like your return address in the sense that when you request a web page then the page has to be sent back to your computer for you to view it.



Your IP address is nowhere as specific as your mailing address.



There are tools on the internet that say they can trace the area to which your IP address belongs. http://www.hostip.info/index.html or http://cqcounter.com/whois/ etc. However, the accuracy is always suspect. I've just tried my IP address in a couple, one got it right (to the town I'm in), another was off by 200 miles and a third was out by over 700 miles - it couldn't even get the right state let alone town.



Getting it down to the town you're in is the best any of these tools can do. The only people who can accurately match an IP address to an actual street address is your ISP. The only people who will have access to this information outside your ISP are law enforcement agencies and then only with a subpeana.



It is possible that someone with a grudge on a fourm or whatever that posts your IP address can mess up your internet connection by continuously "pinging" your IP address. Basically, they flood your connection and so slow it down. This is known as a denial of service attack (DoS) amd is extremely rare against an individual.



Another thing that can happen is that someone may decide they are going to try and hack your IP address. This is even rarer than a DoS attack and is usually defeated by using a strong password on your computer - http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/create.mspx - , using router, using a firewall - http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/home.htm?lid=en-us - and so on. This really is a lot rarer than some people on Yahoo Answers seem to think it is.



Now, one thing that gets said a lot is never, never, never give your IP address to anyone. Well, here's mine 71.114.160.207. Here's Yahoo's - 206.190.60.37 and here's Microsoft's - 207.46.232.182



Generally that's a pretty good rule, it lessens even the small risk of anything bad happening even more, but a lot of forums and other sites log and show them with nothing happening.



I'm no computer security expert by any means but hopefully I know enough to keep my computers safe. Especially so as I run a web server and my IP address is on thousands of computers - it needs to be on the DNS servers otherwise no-one would be able to get to my web sites.



In fact, because of the web server I keep logs of everyone who tries to break out of the web file system - you can see some of these logs about half-way down http://brisray.com/comp/cwserver2.htm

Answer 2

Your IP address is like your street address. Computers on the internet use IP addresses so they know where to send the packets of data. This is similar to someone who wants to visit or UPS delivering a package would need your street address to find out where you live to be able to get there The analogy ends as far as personal information goes though.



Unless you have a static IP address with a domain name registered to you, the IP address belongs to your ISP and it won't give any more information about you other than maybe the town where you live.



Since most people don't go to all the trouble of running their own servers, it is most likely that you have a dynamic IP address and it will change from time to time within a range designated for the local ISP service. If you do a whois lookup, you'll find contact information for your ISP. If you do a reverse DNS lookup, it will come back with a text URL that will probably have an abbreviated state and nearest city abbreviation embedded in it. It would take a search warrant to get more information from the ISP.



If you can live with anyone being able to get within a hundred thousand or more people, then even knowing what city you are close to may not mean anything.



Shadow Wolf

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Ok pretty much if someone hacked your computer because you forgot to logout of yahoo they could get your IP address, Once they have that if they are good they can trace it back to your house. Pretty much if they get your IP address all your personal info is gunna get shared

Answer 5

your ip address is like the street address of your computer anyone with access to this address and experience in hacking can steal information from you like say you can put your credit card information and someone is monitoring you with your ip address they will have your credit card info.