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
Someome’s IP can give you a rough estimate of where they are, what neighborhood at least. It won’t tell you their street address, but it might be enough to know they are in Queens, for example.
This is because IP addresses are not assigned completely at random. Much like phone numbers, there are essentially area codes assigned to certain ISPs and certain Regions.
For many folks even this much is too close for comfort, but it can also narrow things down enough for a determined stalker to figure out exactly where they are from other context cues.
For most people I assume it isn’t really an issue as they more than likely just have a random IP address lease from their ISP and it changes from time to time, so the information would only be relevant for a period of time.
However if you have a static address it is slightly more of an issue. Particularly if your ISP shows your location more accurately because of its static nature. For example I have a static IP address that I use to host servers and stuff. Before actually getting a static IP my ISP basically just said this address is in “my state”. But now I actually have a static address they have narrowed it down to the nearest city. And because of the static nature of my address, should someone get their hands on it, it would be easy for them to constantly check for vulnerabilities in the things I host.
It used to be that having your IP address leaked was not a big deal. On the internet, your IP address is not private. In fact, every website you connect to needs to inherently know your IP address for the internet to work at all. This was also the case for computers connecting directly to one another, which was super common about 20 years ago because big social media sites and centralized file sharing platforms didn’t really exist. For a long time, it wasn’t hugely impactful because there wasn’t really all that much you could *do* with an IP address other than communicate with someone, and it was even expected that other people had your IP address at all times.
The earliest attacks that you could perform against someone with their IP address are known as Denial of Service, or DoS, attacks. This is basically where you flood someone’s internet connection with so much traffic that they can’t do anything online. It’s like trying to water a garden with a fire hose. It was popular for a few years where people on massive university internet connections might flood a small home user’s computer with traffic over a disagreement on a forum or after losing in a game. This basically stopped being a problem once internet providers started implementing DoS prevention for almost all home internet connections.
Then there were attacks that targeted computers connected directly to the internet. These usually relied on someone finding a flaw or security bug in your computer’s code that let them remotely access your computer or install a virus. These stopped being an issue once people started putting their computers behind routers that had a built-in firewall, and once updates started to be pushed out to computers using the internet to specifically fix these security vulnerabilities.
After both of those two things were fixed, late 2000’s internet culture started to pop up where somehow the concept of having someone’s IP address equated to being able to “hack” someone… 5-10 years after it was actually an issue… It was a bunch of nonsense back then, and it’s a bit of nonsense now. Most people don’t understand the concept of what an IP address actually is, and culture has said that it’s a big deal if someone has your IP address and that it’s a thing connected to hackers so it must be a big deal!
In the middle of all of this, someone figured that it might be a good idea if we had a map of where every IP address was in the world, at least down to the city. This was possible because standards started to pop up where every individual IP address had to be registered with a specific company that owned it, that way nothing would overlap. Since your internet provider is usually a local company or a subsidiary of a bigger company that has a local office, this usually points to your general physical area. So, someone put together a database that tied these records together into one giant database that is easily searchable. You put in an IP address, and it comes back with the nearest city. This is mostly used by websites to provide localized results and not much more. If you went to say, weather.com, it would show you the forecast for your local area without you having to even input where you lived. If you went to the website for a travel agency, it might show you results for flights leaving from the closest airport. If you visited an international news website, it might change the language on the page to the one commonly spoken in your country. It’s a really useful tool!
But since the database is easily searchable by absolutely anyone, it ties into a different aspect of cybersecurity: Social Engineering. Social Engineering is the field of “hacking” people rather than computers. It’s the methods behind what gets things like scam calls or spam emails to work, and it’s a huge combination of psychology and computer security that often gets overlooked (I’m studying cybersecurity academically, and social engineering barely gets talked about academically and professionally). “Doxxing” is a form of social engineering where you find someone’s personal information through various means and then post it online in an attempt to harass or threaten someone. It’s not an easy task, but it’s usually a 3-4 step process that I will not go into extreme detail about.
The first hurdle to equating someone’s identity online to their real-life personal details is figuring out where they live. Getting someone’s IP address takes out a lot of the work of finding where someone is because that database that ties IP address to locations exists. From there, it’s fairly simple if you know what you’re doing and all of a sudden you have someone’s home address and a ton of other info that they probably don’t want you to know about them. Of course there’s a ton of intermediate steps, but it’s scary how efficiently someone with real experience can find all of someone’s personal information via just two pieces of info.
But there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from that. Number one is to be careful of the links you click on. There are services that can give someone your IP address just by clicking on a link. If you see a sketchy link from someone you don’t know, maybe don’t click on it. Second, be careful what you post on social media. Just a little bit of information is all someone might need to figure out all of your info. Keep things like your full name, the school you go to, the place you work, the places you travel, the car you drive, etc. all private. Don’t geo-tag your posts. Save your vacation photos until you get home and then post them. Never give out your full name on social media. It’s shockingly easy to find someone’s personal information just by the seemingly innocuous information they might share on social media!
Somebody knowing your IP address alone won’t do much harm.
People could use it to DDOS or otherwise attack or block a person, but only for a short time.
The vast majority of people have dynamic IP addresses, meaning that your IP address today will be different from the one you have tomorrow.
IP addresses are bound to the internet provider and the internet provider will give out a set of addresses in the same general area.
There are databases online that you can use to look up an IP and learn which ISP uses it and in which area.
This is how those stupid banner ads work that reference your approximate location and for example promise single women or jobs in a town close to you.
This is the limit of what most people can do with an IP-address.
If you are law enforcement or involved in a civil lawsuit and a judge issues a subpoena or similar they can ask the internet provider for their logs of who they gave that IP-address at a given date. And your ISP will have billing information and know exactly who pays for the internet and where they send the bills.
There’s also something important if you are a streamer or you are playing online. If someone knows your ip they can completely nuke your internet connection by doing a ddos attack (basically send peitions to someone until the router can’t handle it anymore).
People have said a lot about IP and doxxing. Sharing your IP exposes you to DDoS attacks. For things like games and online meetings (like courtroom meetings) this can causes serious problems.
Your question made me think of this article. It’s a crazy story and also sheds light on how accurate locations for an IP address can be.
You are talking about two very different things.
#IP address
Every device on a network has at least one (and likely more) IP address.
Your router has an IP address that the world can see (or else nothing could be routed to you from the Internet) This may change from time to time (called a dynamic IP) when you turn off your router or at a time decided by your ISP.
Behind that router, your phone, PC, TV, Roku and other devices also have a local IP address (192.168.1.??)
**On its own, an IP address is not really a concern**. Every packet of information that comes to your computer has come from a device that “knew your IP” or else it could not have sent info to you.
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#DOXXING
Look at the [wiki entry for doxxing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing)
Pretend I found your lost drivers license. I could doxx you if I posted a picture of your license (with address, photo, birthday etc.) to facebook or reddit.
I might go further by doing a search for your name & address – then I might find your phone #
Publishing this info about you against your will or without your permission is called DOXXING.
So an IP address in the most simple terms is just a house address for the internet. And just an address on its own really doesn’t mean anything. I can just grab a map, put my finger anywhere randomly and have an address. And similarly for IPs you can just put in some random numbers and you got one most likely.
The real danger comes when you can link it with other info. Like you know the IP of a specific person. Again compared to house addresses it’s a lot more sensitive if you know that an address belongs to a specific user.
A lot of tech exists to make it a lot harder to do anything with an IP. For instance VPNs tunnel your data to a completely different place (often even different country) and uses the IP of the VPN.
And your IP is thrown all over the internet already. When you visit a website, it’s like you’re sending a post card asking for their catalogue. And on the back you write your home address so they can return send something. But this company only really knows your address and that you sent them a card at that time. (I’m not doing anything with cookies which would be equivalent of putting a code on the envelope that identifies who you are globally).
Simply said: IP itself is really nothing sensitive. It becomes scary when you don’t have any security and it is linked to any other info.
An IP is a unique identifier (mostly). It’s similar to your house address. The difference is that IP addresses can change, but only in certain situations. For most people that use their network connection frequently, they’ll keep their IP for a long time. Your computer will be the only one using that address (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist). You can’t have two houses with the same address, you wouldn’t know which one gets the letter.
That means it can be used to forward messages with harmful content, or so many messages at once, the desired ones don’t get through. It can also be used to narrow down where you are to a certain point.
IPs are assigned in blocks to ISPs by a governing body, so if you fall within that block, you can generally figure out what city the device is in. For example, your local cable company might be assigned anything that starts with 123.456.x.x, so anyone with those numbers will be within their area.
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