I am *really* not a computer guy, and this question has kinda been on my mind since I found out about doxxing/IP grabbers ages ago. I didn’t really care too much, since I am not a fan of putting people in danger over twitter like a dickhead, but can someone tell me generally why it’s a serious issue if someone leaks your IP?
Since this sounds as if I’m trying to doxx someone: I’m posting after searching my own IP & I found that most websites pinpointed my address to a different country entirely?? (Still a country next to mines, but definitely more than far away enough for me to care if mines were leaked). Famous people who get doxxed online always move away for safety, so I’m really confused why that is when the website I used to check my own IP address on a bunch of places online at once usually all ended up being a whole country off.
Even though I shouldn’t need to state this outright; **don’t give a step-by-step guide on how to doxx people**. I don’t want to know that. I just want to know why IP grabbing is such a big deal and how doxxing is possible vaguely in a way that forces people to move cities.
In: Technology
It’s such a big deal if you’re 12 years old.
IP addresses don’t matter, the regularly change too.
Basically with ip address they can narrow down your neighborhood using public record means ie through your isp. But in general doxxing requires you give up enough personal info for someone to Google all the pieces and figure it out. Like if you have someone’s name, age, and zip code, you can find out all public info on them.
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Doxxing is typically making someone’s private information public with malicious intent. It doesn’t need to be your IP address, it could be your name on a site you want to be anonymous on, or the town you live in, or perhaps your home address, etc.
Your IP address could be used to find out other private information about you, perhaps including what town you live in, etc. One way to keep your IP address more private would be to use a trusted VPN.
IP address by it’s self is not a big deal. But combine that with a bunch of other details people let slip and it can be weirdly easy to find someone.
Personally, I prefer to hide in the data. Like, reverse search profile photo isn’t gonna help a lot.
Ip addresses by themselves don’t really have a huge effect in terms of doxxing, but are more like a piece to a puzzle. Doxxing in a way is sort of like piecing small bits of information together to build out information on somebody. Typically it’s all done through publicly available information vectors.
As an example, let’s say you are trying to find out the address of a long lost cousin of yours. The only thing you have to go on is their name, and perhaps their parents names in this case. You also know what state they live in.
From this information, you can use what you have to find out info and then pivot into other pieces of information. This cousin is a registered voter and lives in a state where that is publicly accessible? You have a potentially easy vector to an address, but a bunch of information you’d need to filter down. Other clues can help too, especially social media presence. This sort of stuff is easy if the person is pretty typical and doesn’t do much to hide their online presence.
Where an IP address could come into play is with your example. Occasionally the geolocation of the address is actually accurate and may give the doxxer information like the country or state they live in. It’s not concrete evidence, but it could narrow down results. It provides pieces to the puzzle but isn’t entirely helpful by itself.
Stuff like this is why it is incredibly important to hide identifying information about yourself online. A social media presence is an incredible attack vector for bad actors. Unfortunately in some states even just registering to vote puts your name and address out on publicly available lists.
If you’re a typical user, and have a dynamic IP address (randomly assigned by your ISP), the most it can tell you is what country you’re from and maybe the general location (within 100 miles) – though your ISP may be in another region/state, so it could be way off. Your ISP may keep records of what modem it assigned what IP address to on which day and for how long, which would then allow someone to be able to tie any of your web traffic to your household modem.
If you’re a less typical user, you may have a static IP address you’ve purchased. These can show to the street level what your physical address is.
*(edited to add physical to last sentence)*
The thing you should be concerned about is identity theft and getting sucked into scams. Here in Australia. If you have someones name, their birth date and birth location, you can get a birth certificate. With that you can get a licence. With that utilities and bank accounts all in your name. Then they can take out credit cards, mortgages all in your name, and the onus is on you to prove you didn’t take out all those loans. Identity theft can set you back decades.
Never put your real birth date online. Birth day but not birth year! EVER, ANYWHERE!
There are a few types of doxxing. I don’t know the proper names so I’m using ones that make sense to me.
The first is a flood attack. Basically an IP address is a computer’s phone number. It uses it to make calls to other computers for websites and games and so on. Just like if someone knows your phone number they can call you over and over to the point you never have time to make calls out for stuff you want to do. At that point you effectively have 0 internet because you can’t use it for anything.
The second is to use the IP address as a way to track you down. As you said, the IP address itself isn’t very accurate and can show as another country. But ISPs like to have people use the same IP addresses if they can. It’s for a good reason, banks and other secure services are much happier if someone doesn’t use 20 different addresses to access the same account each day. But this means if a person tracks what sites the IP address accesses over time they can find out a lot of info about you.
If the address connects to a bank website, you probably live in a city with a bank branch.
If you access a restaurant website you are probably close to that place and might visit in the next day or two.
If you access a school website you or a family member probably goes to that school.
If you post on reddit or another site that post typically logs the ip used so they now know your username and you probably use the same name everywhere so that instantly gives another method to find info about you.
Maybe using that username they find an old website you used to post on 10 years ago and you posted a pic of you standing in front of your new house.
That pic has geo data in the metadata so they now know within ~100 meters where your house is.
Hop on google street view and within a few minutes they match that picture to an exact street address and can do whatever they want with it.
Doxxing is not particularly a serious concern regarding an IP address being leaked. The location they yield is very vague, often not exact enough for anyone to be able to cause significant harm with it.
The true concern is rather with the ability of a DDoS attack. In short, the IP can now be flooded with traffic, which often times will slow it down to an unusable degree, and sometimes even temporarily take it down.
However, for someone to care enough to send a DDoS attack at you, you’d have to have hurt them pretty badly.
Generally, getting your IP leaked is not a large concern, especially since an IP can easily be changed by simply restarting the server.
(if I stated anything wrong, please tell me. this is my first time answering a question on this sub so it may not be the most accurate)
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