Asking this because someone who has a beef on me told me that he knew my ip and where I message from.
I’m super ignorant in computer stuff, along with being paranoic about someone messing my computer/Phone up.
What is the worst harm which they can do to my laptop and/or personal information
Thanks for reading
In: Technology
Probably very little risk.
Your IP address can give someone a _general_ location for you, based on how large your ISP is and the geographic area they cover. So, for example, if you knew my IP address you could figure out what city I live in. That isn’t going to help you too much on its own – my city has about 8M people in the greater metro area.
Now, if they have _other_ information about me, they might be able to narrow it down further using my city as a starting point.
They could also use your IP to try and penetrate your home network and mess with devices there, but odds are your router’s firewall is robust enough to prevent that from happening unless they are farily sophisticated. Reality is that your home network is always under constant attack and the firewall keeps it at bay.
Typically nothing. Most public IPs don’t trace to your home anyway but to a near by operator hub.
99% chance the person who said it did it just to spook you.
If you are very concerned, you can use a VPN to “hide” your “real” IP address.
Someone telling you they know your ip address is akin to them telling you they know your physical address. There are some options of what to do with that information, but most of them are illegal risky and difficult to achieve.
If the person is very dedicated and annoying they could possibly crowdsource some pings to your router or something to cause internet issues, but it’s probably unlikely.
If you are concerned about it you can request your provider provide a different IP address if you have a static IP for business, otherwise they often change as your equipment renews leases from the upstream DHCP provider on your IPSs network.
basicly nothing. with the ip they can usaly get a general position but thats almost it. ip adresses change regularly so in a few days you should have a new one. your pc is usaly protectet behind at least 2 firewals (one in your router and one in your pc). all data trafic that wants to get to your pc needs to go through these firewals but they only let data through under some circumstances. the first option is that you allowed. it. you can tell your firewall “hey im a server, please dont stop data thats komming to me”. this option is usaly only done for servers and i asume you havent done that. the second option is if you asked for that data. if you send out data to a server to browse on reddit for excample, your firewall sees that you wantet to talk to the reddit server and allows the data through.
long story short, if the dude tried to send any data to your computer to “hack” it. your router would simply say “nope i dont know you”. and even if he let it though then it would get stoped by the pc itself.
the only real “danger” there is is something called a “ddos attack”. its basicly a bunch of servers trying to send you a tonn of data at once. due to all that data comming in, your router will be overwhelmed and you lose your internet connection (while the attac continues). ussaly your service provider will notice this relativly quick and shut down the connection the the attakers to resore your internet)
that’s equivalent of a after school fight kid crying and screaming “I know where u live”. An IP address can give an approx geolocation and very easy to obtain, but that’s it, won’t get your road number and address or floor.
Now, there are many many shitty things someone can do with a road/city address (famously swatting, making a fake bomber/terrorist call, or sending 100s of delivery pizzas, or taxis).
You would need a proper “skilled little hacker” to be able to damage or take over your machines, but is really an incredibly small chance.
The people answering this post saying it means nothing are clueless. Here is the real truth, and the real risk:
If I have your IP address, I can begin penetration testing against your IP (which is the external IP address of your Firewall/Internet Router). If I find a way past your Firewall/Router, and inside your network, then I can begin working to break into your computer directly. Once I am inside your Computer directly, I can completely destroy your life with ease. It’s trivial to load child porn images into a folder on your computer, and then drop anonymous tips to various law enforcement agencies. If that happens, you are in a world of shit. 99% of the people on this planet have no clue how to break into a Router or firewall, so in all likelihood, you are ok. But if you are unlucky, and you piss off that 1 guy who does know how to break in, and you catch him in a bad mood, it may not end well for you. My advice is to NOT engage with trolls on internet, and always make sure your router has the latest firmware, and is NOT using the default username and password.
They can’t do much, but the best thing you can do is stop engaging.
Your ip address provides some very general information about your location. Alone, kind of useless. But if someone truly has a vendetta against you, they could take that info, cross reference it with other things they know about you (for example, if you’ve made posts about your personal life including personal details) and then try to find out more.
That’s me really trying to stretch the scenario. If you’re not posting other identifying information for this person to see and practicing good discretion (no clicking on links you don’t recognize, not downloading files from an unknown source), you should be fine.
Not engaging is usually the way to deescalate someone who has said they want to cause you some form of harm.
There’s not really anything they can do with the IP on it’s own. It’s part of a large network of other users, that all connect to a similar area, and having it alone, is as useful as those “hot singles in your area” ads can do, which I’m sure you’ve noticed, are not actually very accurate. It may be worth making sure your router (if it’s one you have access to), has appropriate security settings though.
If you’re worried about this person, you’ll want to be careful of more social hacking techniques though. He has a single cog, and depending on how/where the beef came from, they’re likely to have others, but it takes a lot of targeted hacking techniques to actually get anything useful from someone.
Be careful, apply general concepts to things you do online, don’t leave yourself vulnerable through clicking unknown links/downloading weird stuff, and all the general safety stuff for online privacy.
You can get DDoS’d if bad people know your IP.
They send so much garbage to your IP that you temporarily lose internet.
This has happened few times in competive multiplayer games. During important moment the targeted player loses connection and then loses the game.
Not a big threat unless someone is willing to do illegal things to win in a game.
99.999% of the time, nothing will happen. You can usually change your IP with ease, though, if you’re concerned. The easiest way is to just change one digit on your modems MAC address and restart it. It’ll force it to grab a new IP from your ISP. You can also try just rebooting your modem, not your router, and sometimes it’ll grab a new ip. You can check your current ip by going to what’smyip dot com and seeing it before and after a restart. You can also call your ISP and ask them to assign you a new IP.
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