Why is it bad for someone to have your ip address? What can they do with this information?
In: 76
These days not much
If someone knows your IP they can scan your home network and try to find devices like your computer or printer and either attempt to break in or harass you.
But If you use a common wifi router it blocks all the incoming unsolicited ports to your home (it acts like a firewall) so a port scan shouldn’t find anything.
You can use an IP address to trace someones movements online to a degree, but you need access to those types of logs which are not publicly available. IP addresses are also shared by multiple people in a home or a business and tend to change frequently so you can’t really equate an IP address to specific person.
These days if a script kiddie (amateur hacker) learns your IP address they are more likely to conduct a Denial of Service Attack (DoS) which means sending so much garbage traffic to your IP that you can’t use your internet.
I’ve had that happen to me before and quickly learned which 14 year old was doing it as it was a kid at school. One phone call to the parents and threatening to call the police solved that problem.
The problem is if some script kiddie on a video game learns your IP and gets angry with you it’s a lot harder to make them stop harassing you. You basically have to wait until they get bored.
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