What Can My Ip Address Reveal
What does an IP address tell you and how it can put you at risk
April 23, 2021
Cars have VINs. Humans have Social Security numbers. And our internet-connected devices have unique identifiers, too — Internet Protocol addresses, commonly known as IP addresses.
Similar to those other identifiers in our lives, an IP address does reveal a little bit about you, namely your geolocation.
Here, we’ll dig further into the meaning, purpose, and inner workings of an IP address to explain just what does an IP address tell you — and others.
What is an IP address?
An IP address is a string of numbers assigned to an internet-connected device, much like an address on a house. Your computer network uses the IP address to communicate with other computers, websites, and all parts of cyberspace.
Essentially, IP addresses are how computers on the internet recognize one another. Your internet service provider (ISP) assigns IP addresses to your internet-connected devices, and every IP address is unique. Considering every single internet-connected device has an IP address, billions of IP addresses exist.
You can think of an IP address like a membership card to enter the World Wide Web. Every device that can connect to the internet is a member of the World Wide Web — computers, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, routers, etc. — and all have an IP address. Websites and computer networks require that form of identification for you to interact with them.
Understanding an IP address and how it works aside, it’s also important to understand the purpose of IP addresses in the first place.
What is the purpose of an IP address?
An IP address can be considered a digital address for your internet-connected devices, as it reveals your geolocation to help the internet deliver content that’s relevant to you.
For example, it’s due in part to your IP address that you see local restaurants pop up when you search “sushi restaurants. ”
How to find your IP address
To find your IP address, simply Google “what is my IP address. ” It’s as simple as that: The internet provides your IP address back to you. The internet knows your IP address because it’s assigned to your device and it is required to browse the internet.
Worth mentioning is that your IP address changes every time you connect to a different Wi-Fi network or router. Online users won’t even know the difference and, generally, they don’t need to — much like how they don’t necessarily need to know how to read an IP address.
Rather, online users should be aware of what information their IP address reveals.
What information does my IP address reveal?
IP addresses do reveal your geolocation, but not your precise location like a home address and never your name, phone number, or other precise personal information. Instead, IP addresses might reveal your city, ZIP code, or area code of where you are connecting to the internet at that moment — this is why IP addresses change every time you connect from a new location or using a new router.
And it’s generally your router’s IP address that is revealed, not the IP address of your internet-connected devices such as a computer, tablet, or mobile phone that communicate with a router to connect to the internet. Sure, these internet-connected devices share their IP address with your router, but your router uses its own IP address to grant your device access to the World Wide Web.
It’s for this reason that your IP address almost always reveals the geolocation of your ISP’s nearest servers — not your physical location at all — and your IP address also reveals the name of your ISP.
Finally, to put your mind at ease, we have answers to a few common IP address FAQs regarding what information an IP address reveals about you:
What does an IP address tell you? For the most part, an IP address tells you the city, ZIP code, or area code of your ISP, as well as your ISP’s name.
What can an IP address tell you? To some degree, your physical location and also the name of your ISP.
Can IP addresses reveal your identity? No, not outrightly. However, others can piece together bits of your identity, using your IP address and by following your online activity.
How others can find your IP address — and why they want to
For others to find your IP address, it is not as easy as searching “What is [insert name]’s IP address. ” It takes a bit more legwork. But it’s also not as difficult as some might think, considering we leave our digital footprints and, in turn, IP addresses behind online with every click.
Remember, IP addresses are like your membership card to the internet and are required to enter any website and webpage on it. So, every time you click something online it’s like signing a guestbook and your IP address is the signature you leave behind. This includes social media sites, internet forums, chatrooms, and blogs you comment on. All of these platforms can view your IP address.
Also, cybercriminals can find your IP address by hacking into your home network or placing a bug in email HTML.
For a more straightforward approach to find your IP address, others might simply borrow your device and Google “what is my IP address” or inspect the header of an email address. There are also IP lookup services, whereby users can simply copy and paste an IP address into a search bar and discover a person’s geolocation.
Authorities, including, law enforcement or fraud investigators, can also use subpoenas to contact your ISP and get your IP address.
But, why would other people want to know your IP address and what would they do with it?
Is it dangerous for people to know your IP address?
Since an IP address doesn’t outrightly reveal your personal information or confidential data, it’s generally not dangerous for people to know your IP address — but it all depends on who’s trying to access it.
Consider the following parties who might be interested in your IP address and why:
Authorities to piece together illegal activities
Employers to understand where you’re spending time online at work
Advertisers to target you with relevant products and services
Blacklist databases to block access from spammers
Retailers to cross-check your geolocation with your payment method’s mailing address
Chatrooms to block inappropriate users
Subscription services to block users from accessing content unavailable in their area or region
Hackers to install malware on your devices
Cybercriminals to put you at risk of Denial of Service attacks
Criminals who, if they already know your personal information, might call your ISP and commit a vishing attack
You might even want to use an IP address to confirm whether an online friend or virtual love interest resides where they say they do
As with most things in life, people’s intentions vary.
When it comes to others trying to find your IP address, some might have malicious intentions, such as to track you. Others, however, might be watching out for you, such as a well-intentioned bank confirming a transfer request is being submitted by you.
Finally, just because someone knows your IP address does not necessarily mean they will wind up on your doorstep. Still, you might want to take measures to protect your IP address.
How to protect your IP address
The simplest and most straightforward way to protect your IP address is to use a virtual private network (VPN) because this anonymizes your online activity using encryption. It also changes your IP address completely, placing your geolocation hundreds or maybe thousands of miles from where you actually are accessing the internet.
Talk about throwing someone off your digital tail.
The bottom line: IP addresses reveal geolocations and you can prevent this
No, IP addresses are not as sacred as our Social Security numbers, but it’s still worth understanding what an IP address reveals and also how to hide your IP address if you want to.
After all, being informed is a best practice when it comes to protecting our online privacy.
Cyber threats have evolved, and so have we.
Norton 360™ with LifeLock™, all-in-one, comprehensive protection against viruses, malware, identity theft, online tracking and much, much more.
Try Norton 360 with Lifelock.
Editorial note: Our articles provide educational information for you. NortonLifeLock offerings may not cover or protect against every type of crime, fraud, or threat we write about. Our goal is to increase awareness about cyber safety. Please review complete Terms during enrollment or setup. Remember that no one can prevent all identity theft or cybercrime, and that LifeLock does not monitor all transactions at all businesses.
Copyright © 2021 NortonLifeLock Inc. All rights reserved. NortonLifeLock, the NortonLifeLock Logo, the Checkmark Logo, Norton, LifeLock, and the LockMan Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NortonLifeLock Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Firefox is a trademark of Mozilla Foundation. Android, Google Chrome, Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google, LLC. Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U. S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Alexa and all related logos are trademarks of, Inc. or its affiliates. Microsoft and the Window logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U. The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3. 0 Attribution License. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
What Does Your IP Address Tell The World About You?
As you probably already know, your IP address is the address or logical location of your computer when it’s connected to the Internet. Networking software/hardware must know your IP address for you to connect and go online. Thankfully, you don’t need to know your IP address every time and enter it in, like a password. However, if you ever want to know what it is, you can find out quickly by going to
Websites and networks also need to know your IP address, in the digital way that computers do. IP addresses are part of TCP/IP, the protocols that networks speak that allow us all to get online. Think of it as a common digital language.
And while it’s somewhat rare for an individual to need or want your IP address, there are ways for them to get it. In fact, almost anyone that you email could find yours out.
But what is it they would get? Click here to find out.
It’s no secret.
A lot of people worry that their IP address might reveal their name, home address, age, what they look at online and more. That’s just not the case. Sure, they might find out some interesting information, but nothing revealing.
Let’s show you what you can discover by running a real IP address through the IP Lookup feature at You can use a random IP address for the test—even yours. But for this exercise, we’ll use 68. 4. 39. 37.
IP Details
This number is the IP address of a computer/router that’s connected to the Internet somewhere in Southern California. If there is a single computer on that account, it’s the IP address linked to the computer. If the computer is connected to a router, it’s the router’s address.
The IP Lookup feature isn’t linked to an extensive Internet directory. It’s not like the landline phone system, where you could grab a phone directory or call the telephone operator and try to match a name and street address to a telephone number. (Talk about a lack of privacy! )
In the Internet world, there’s no such thing—not for an ordinary citizen and not even for law enforcement, without a subpoena.
IP Lookup in action.
When you visit the IP Lookup page and paste an address into the empty box, here’s what you’ll find out:
The first time you see the IP details—especially your city, ZIP code and the area code of where you live—it can be a bit a surprising. The IP details aren’t always close. They can be hundreds of miles off, and if the person is using a VPN and a different IP address, the information can be highly inaccurate.
But it’s important to see what you don’t get in the IP details, and never will. You don’t see any real information about the person who is using that assigned IP address, including a street name and address. You will get the name of the Internet Service Provider that serves the domain name…in this case, the cable company Cox Communications. In most cases, knowing the name of the ISP is all that somebody wants to know.
Getting to the source.
There are a handful of practical reasons people use IP Lookup, even with its limitations:
Law enforcement and fraud investigators use online tools to see what ISP is hosting a spammer.
Blacklist databases use it to find spammers or other violators and block their access to email servers.
Retailers often use IP Lookup to make sure someone charging thousands of dollars is at the mailing address linked to the card…and not actually overseas with a stolen credit account.
You can use it to verify that someone who tells you in an email that they’re across town isn’t really in an abandoned warehouse in another country.
Find out what can be seeing about your IP address by clicking here.
Get hidden now. »» I want to hide my IP
Related Articles
What is an IP Address?
Can Someone Find Me?
How Someone Can Get Your IP Address
IP Address Lookup Tool
How do I Hide my IP Address?
HDG Explains: What Is An IP Address & Can It Really Trace …
For one big world composed of nothing more than 0s and 1s, the internet can sometimes be a scary place. If you’ve been on the internet for years, you’ve likely had your information leaked or a password stolen. Chalk it up as coming with the territory.
Even while abiding by the most strict security standards, there’s nothing you can do if a website trusted with your information suffers a data breach.
In such breaches, and everywhere else across the internet, we come attached to an identifier called an IP address. While your IP address isn’t as sacred as a fingerprint, it’s still a piece of your digital information worth guarding and understanding.
So, what happens if someone gets their hands on your IP address? Can bad things happen? In this article, we’ll explore a couple of topics: What is an IP address is and what’s at stake in the event that yours is leaked.
What Is An IP Address?
While there are plenty of sites out there that can break down IP addresses in a technical way, the majority of people online aren’t deeply experienced and require a layman’s explanation.
Simply put, an IP address is a string of numbers, separated by periods as four octets, that you are assigned every time you connect to the internet. IP addresses are allocated in a number of ways, but the most noteworthy is that it will relate directly to your physical location and internet service provider (ISP). An internet service provider is the company that gives you your internet, such as Comcast or AT&T.
An example of an IP address is 69. 89. 31. 226. This address was assigned to a device at the moment it established a connection to the internet, and although it is not permanent, it will remain assigned to the device based on certain conditions that are often specific to each individual ISP.
For most ISPs, simply disconnecting your router and reconnecting it after a few minutes will renew your IP address. For others, you may be asked to call to perform an IP release and renewal. There are billions of IP addresses floating around in the IPv4 space, which is the four-octet format described earlier—so many, in fact, that we will soon have to convert to IPv6 before all possible IPv4 addresses have been allocated.
How Can I Find My IP Address?
Over at Online Tech Tips, we recently published a lengthy article explaining the many ways for you to find your public IP address.
However, the most simple and stress-free way of doing this is to type in a phrase such as “my IP address” in a Google search. Above the search results, Google will immediately show your current IP address.
What Does My IP Address Reveal?
On the surface, an IP address looks no more identifying than just a phone number. However, just like how the internet allows us to trace a phone number to much more identifying information, your IP address actually tells quite a lot about you—including your location.
Don’t be alarmed, though! The geolocation of an IP address and a device’s GPS location are two very different things. For mobile devices, pinpointing an exact physical location is completely possible. With only an IP address, it’s not.
The best way to see exactly what your IP tells about you is to simply see for yourself. We recommend using an IP address data provider such as IPinfo. IPinfo has a page that you can navigate to and instantly see all of the freely available information about your IP address.
On this page, you’ll see the city, postal code, coordinates, timezone, local time, and even a map related to your IP address. However, you’ll notice that none of this information is exact. This information may point to an area nearby, but nowhere near as accurate as GPS location data. This is intended.
This geolocation information actually relates to your ISP, which you’ll see information about on this same page: hostname, ASN, organization (typically the ISP name), connection speed, and more. The exact location you see pinpointed on the map should be where your ISP’s nearest servers are located.
How Can I Protect My IP Address?
Your IP address is far from private, and just about every single website or service you interact with online is going to use it in one way or another. While your IP address alone doesn’t give away everything someone would need to show up at your doorstep, it’s still a valuable piece of your privacy that you may want to protect.
Should someone want to locate you, an IP address is something that can help confirm suspicions and search for more precise information. An IP address also puts you at risk of denial-of-service attacks, which can leave your internet connection stressed or completely disconnected for hours on end.
The simplest way to protect your IP address is to stay connected to a VPN. A VPN, or virtual private network, tunnels your internet connection through a proxy server so that your real IP address is only seen by the VPN provider. An IP address assigned by the VPN is what websites and potentially malicious users will see from your device.
While most VPNs aren’t free, you can check out Online Tech Tips’ list of the five best VPN apps for more information on how to protect your IP address by using them.
Have no fear—with no additional context, there’s no pin on a map that drops on your home when someone searches for your IP address. However, your IP address can provide crucial clues related to your general location, and if the wrong person gets their hands on it, a DDoS attack can potentially follow.
