Find Someone’S Name From Ip Address
Finding the Owner of an IP Address – Ask Leo!
What you can find, how to find it, and what you can and can’t do with it.
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While you can’t find the specific owner of an IP address, there are a few tools to see what IP-related information you can get.
How do I figure out who owns an IP address?
You don’t.
That may come across as rude, but it’s the truth.
The level of detail most people want is simply not something you or I can get on our own.
There’s a certain amount of information you can get, however, and I’ll show you what that is and how to get it.
Who’s at an IP AddressIt’s not possible to find out who is using a specific IP address without the aid of law enforcement. There are services, including whois, reverse DNS, Geo-IP, and IP-sharing lookups, that can provide some information about an IP address. To go beyond that point, you need the assistance of the ISP owning the IP address, and to get that, you likely need law enforcement or the courts to get them to release otherwise private information.
Who cares who owns an IP address?
I’ve received this question repeatedly, and for various reasons. Most commonly, it’s from someone being harassed online. They believe they have the IP address of the person responsible, and they want to track the person down.
It’s important to realize that you will not, on your own, be able to get the information you want.
The name, location, phone number, email address, or other specific information is not available if all you have is an IP address. Not only can an IP address change or be shared among many computers (and hence people), but the information you’re seeking is private and protected by the ISP, who really “owns” the IP address.
Let’s look at what you can determine from an IP address on your own, and a few tools that will help you determine who that ISP is.
Whois
“Whois” is a service that basically answers the question “who is X” where X is an IP address, a domain name, or, potentially, several other things.
ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is a fine place to start. The ARIN Whois can be accessed from In the upper right corner’s Search box,
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enter the IP address you’re interested in and press Return. I’ll use 72. 104. 186. 113 (an IP address that I know to be assigned) as my example.
This is typical of what you’ll get: information that identifies the ISP who owns the “block” of IP addresses containing the IP address you asked about. In this example, the block is owned by Verizon Wireless, and includes all IP addresses from 72. 96. 0. 0 through 72. 127. 255. 255.
With a court order, law enforcement could then approach the ISP for more detailed information, including who the IP address was assigned to at the time in question.
Note that it’s possible the information presented may point you to a different whois server. ARIN covers IP addresses assigned in North America; there are other services for the rest of the planet.
Reverse DNS
In some cases, reverse DNS can be instructive.
DNS (Domain Name System) maps a domain name, like “”, to an IP address. As its name implies, reverse DNS does the opposite: given an IP address, it finds the domain name that has been assigned as the primary1 identifier.
I’ll use a tool from a third-party vendor this time,
You can see this gives much of the same information that we’ve seen above, namely the ISP who owns that IP address. But there’s an additional tidbit of information.
is the domain name associated to this IP address. This type of domain name is common for IP addresses assigned to consumers and small businesses. You can see that “myvzw” is an additional clue to which ISP provides this IP address: Verizon Wireless.
Occasionally, you may find things in the reverse DNS that lead you to some additional theories about the IP’s ownership, including, perhaps, an actual domain name for a website or some kind of encoded general location.
GEOIP
Looking at the report from, you can see that it references “United States Newark Verizon Wireless” as the IP location. Needless to say, that’s incorrect. It reflects the location of the ISP — Verizon Wireless — but does not refer to the location of the equipment connected to and using that IP address.
We may be able to get a little closer.
A company called MaxMind provides geographic location information based on IP addresses. They have a page on which you can test their technology, and here’s what they displayed for the IP address I entered:
Here you can see that the scope has narrowed somewhat. The location is listed as Chattaroy, Washington.
We’re getting closer, but not much. MaxMind has correctly identified the state where this IP has been assigned. The city of Chattaroy, however, is several hundred miles on the other side of the state from where that IP address is actually in use.
This is common. For most normal, residential, or small-business connections, most of the publicly available information is accurate only to the state. Occasionally, depending on how the ISP has constructed their network, you may be able to get to the correct city or neighborhood. It is possible, just not common — and there’s no real way to know how accurate the information is when you get it. The response for my IP address here at home, for example, is a city five miles to the south of me. Close, but not close enough.
IP sharing
Particularly when it comes to web servers and web hosting, it can be instructive to see what other domains might be hosted at the same IP address and server.
We’ll use for this.
A lookup of a residential or other IP assigned for internet access is unlikely to return any results, so we’ll use another IP address, one I know is assigned to a shared hosting service: 69. 89. 31. 214.
Reverse shared IP lookup results. Click for larger image. (Screenshot:)
That shows the beginning of a list of hundreds of entries. This is common for shared hosting: hundreds, if not thousands, of websites can be hosted on a single, powerful server.
This probably wasn’t what you wanted
While I’ve shown you several tools you can use to gather information about an IP address, I understand that it’s probably not enough to satisfy you. Most people want the name of the person at an IP address, their physical address, their email address, or their phone number.
You can’t get there from here.
The ISP provides internet service to someone, it’s true, but they will not release that information, and that information is not available publicly. You’ll need the assistance of courts, law enforcement, and possibly overseas law enforcement, if the IP address is located in another country.
And when you think about it, that’s exactly as it should be: if the tables were reversed, you wouldn’t want random people tracking you down by your IP address, do you?
You can’t. They can’t.
And that’s good.
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2: An IP address can be assigned to many different domains, particularly on shared hosting services. One domain name is typically designated as the primary. For example a reverse DNS lookup on the server hosting would actually return you – the primary name of that server.
Can I Get Someone’s Name and Address from Their IP Address?
I have the IP address of someone who’s causing me some problems. Can I get their name and location from that?
Yes and no. But mostly no.
This is perhaps one of the most common questions I get. Unfortunately, people’s expectations have been colored — often dramatically — by popular television shows and movies.
Unfortunately, this is real life, which isn’t nearly as easy or exciting.
There is public information about IP addresses.
Public information is limited to identifying the ISP providing a specific IP address.
More details are available from the ISP, but typically only if you have a valid, legal reason.
Publicly available information
As I’ve discussed in previous articles, there are services on the internet that return information about an IP address. An IP address (short for Internet Protocol Address) is a number used to identify a device connected to a TCP/IP network like the internet.
ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is the canonical place to start. It’s the organization that organizes IP address assignments in the U. S. They provide a “who is” (often just referred to as whois, without the space) search, which will look up the owner of an IP address or refer you to the equivalent service in another country, if appropriate.
is another one that includes a whois service. It looks up both domain names (like “”) and IP addresses, so you can see who owns them.
PlotIP is an interesting service that will also perform a whois lookup and return information about the IP address, including a map of where the service believes the IP address is located.
The problem with public information
In all of these cases, and other similar services, the information retrieved is about the owner of the IP address, not the current user of the IP address.
In other words, the information you get relates only to the ISP or hosting company that has allocated that IP address to one of its customers.
Typically, the information includes the name, address, and phone number of the ISP. In the case of attempts to determine location, the information is at best an approximation, and either represents the location of the ISP’s headquarters or of one of the ISP’s distribution points.
In a practical sense, it is never the location of the actual person who is using that IP address.
Getting more detail
The ISP knows more. In fact, I’d venture to say that the ISP probably knows everything. They know to whom the IP address was assigned. For dynamic IP addresses, I’m sure they know or can find out who it was allocated to, when it was allocated, and for how long it was used.
But there’s an issue that interferes with getting that information from the ISP.
Privacy.
Face it: you wouldn’t want your ISP to just hand out your private information to anyone who walked up with some kind of story claiming they needed it. The same is hopefully true for any and all ISPs: privacy matters.
ISPs will turn over that information to law enforcement when the right requests are made and paperwork presented. In the U. S., that’s typically a court order. In that case, the ISP will provide the information to the police, not to you. The police can then take the appropriate steps based on your reasons for going this far in the first place.
So can I get it or not?
Can you get a name an address from an IP? Yes, if you are the police and have the legal backing to ask for it.
Otherwise, no. If you’re a regular person just trying to track something down on your own, that information is not available. The same privacy policies and restrictions that protect you protect everyone.
Can You Get Someone’s Name and Address from Their IP …
What an IP address does, and does not, tell you. I have the IP address from someone who’s causing me some problems. Can I get their name and location from that? Yes and no. But mostly is perhaps one of the most common questions or comments I get. Unfortunately, people’s expectations have been colored — often dramatically — by popular television shows and movies. Unfortunately, this is real life — which isn’t nearly as easy or I’ve discussed in other articles, there are services on the internet that will return information about an IP, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is the canonical place to start. It’s this organization that actually organizes IP address assignments in the U. S. They provide a “who is” (often just referred to as whois, without the space) search, which will look up the owner of an IP address or refer you to the equivalent service in another country, if is another one that includes a whois service that will look up both domain names (like “”) and IP addresses, so you can see who owns is an interesting service that will also perform a whois lookup and return information about the IP address, including a map of where the service believes the IP address is all of these cases, and other similar services, the information retrieved is not about the current user of the IP address, but the owner of the IP other words, the information that you get relates only to the ISP or hosting company that has allocated that IP address to one of its customers. Typically, the information returned will include the name, address, and phone number of the ISP. In the case of attempts to determine location, the information is at best an approximation, and either represents the location of the ISP’s headquarters or the location of one of the ISP’s distribution a practical sense, it is never the location of the actual person who is using that IP ISP knows more. In fact, I’d venture to say that the ISP probably knows all. They know to whom the IP address was assigned. For dynamic IP addresses, I’m sure that they know or can find out who it was allocated to, when it was allocated, and for how long it was there’s a problem that gets in the way of getting that information from the it: you wouldn’t want your ISP to just hand out your private information to anyone who walked up with some kind of story claiming they needed it. The same is hopefully true for any and all ISPs — privacy will turn over that information to law enforcement when the right requests are made and paperwork presented. In the U. S., that’s typically in the form of a court order. In that case, the ISP will provide the information to the police — not to you. The police can then take the appropriate steps based on your reasons for going this far in the first you get a name an address from an IP? Yes … if you are the police and have the legal backing to go get it. Otherwise, no. If you’re a regular person just trying to track something down on your own, that information is simply not available. The same privacy policies and restrictions that protect you protect everyone.
