How Your IP Address Can Be Used to Spy on You: Safety Tips

Anybody with a little know-how can find, view and “capture” your IP address. With the right technical know-how and a computer trick here and there, companies, government institutions, and the typical nerdy IT guy—and even your annoying teenage neighbor—can spy on your IP address. They can sniff out your IP address without your permission. But why would someone even care to know your IP address? People have different reasons for wanting to know it, and there are many ways to get it. Often, finding IP address details can help in tracking online activities or location. However, even if they reveal your IP , it doesn’t expose sensitive personal information directly. The three most common reasons people want to track your IP address are: Yikes. Let’s look at each of those reasons more closely. A business may want to know your IP address because they simply want to run in through an IP lookup service to find out where “you” are located. Let’s say an online retail customer whose mailing address says, “New York, NY” and buys thousands of dollars of fancy merchandise from a company. However, when that company captures the customer’s IP address, it figures out his location is really Russia or China. That’s a real problem. In fact, it’s common for advertisers, companies, and service websites to “grab” your IP addresses if you’re visiting their site or if you click on ads on their website. By spying on your IP address, they can: There are ways to block your IP like you block a phone number, and we’ll cover those later. By knowing your IP address, an online subscription service could block you from accessing their content, because a sporting/special event is otherwise blacked out in your area. An online forum could also “block” access to their chat room by knowing your IP address. It’s not that people can “use” your IP address, it’s more that by knowing it they can track you, target you, or block you. With a subpoena and your IP address, law enforcement can ask your ISP for your name and home address and gain permission to hack into your emails. If they have reason enough, they can spy on your Internet activity. Now that you know HOW people get your IP address— every day, with ease —you can learn how to stop them. There are at least 11 ways people on the Internet can get your IP address: If somebody uses or borrows your computer, they can find out your IP address simply by going to WhatIsMyIPaddress.com in a web browser on your device. It pops right up. If your home network isn’t well secure, a stranger can tap into your wireless network. Also, if you let a guest use your network (you provide the password) they will know your IP address. Relax: Most Internet/email providers today no longer include the IP address of someone who sends an email. But smaller Internet Service Providers or people who set up their own email server which might still be revealing their IP address. Try our trace email tool to see. This bug isn’t a virus or malicious. It’s simply a piece of code embedded in an image that’s included with an email you read. If you view the image (often just by opening the email), the bug simply tells the sender that you read the email…and it also provides your IP address. There are even services that help people set up email bugs like this, such as WhoReadMe.com. Here’s how the Internet works: Every time you visit a website, you leave your IP address. After all, it’s your digital pass to connect online. A website can (if they wish) scour their eeb-server computers to review all the IP addresses, just to see the reach of their message or who’s a repeat visitor. Who knew? But hang on, there are more ways people can spy on your IP address… Joining a forum to share ideas or contribute to a discussion is getting more popular, especially in online education. Your “handle” may identify your voice and opinions, but your IP address identifies your computer to the administrator. (That’s how they ban you if you break their rules.) Bloggers write in part to hear the opinions of their readers. Not only can the blog administrator read what you have said, but they can also uncover your IP address with a few keystrokes. Social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) do not reveal IP addresses between users, but the site administrators indeed know your IP address. Also, if you click on an ad or link on the site, they will capture your IP address. Your mobile phone uses an IP address every time you engage someone through a messaging app, such as WhatsApp and Viber. Messaging app usage is growing incredibly fast. Your IP address is invisible to the person you message, but if you click on a link in a message, the website you sent it to has access to your IP address. There are sites like grabify.link and iplogger.org that you can use to create trackable links. The email header on your office’s email could reveal your IP address, and a clever IT-minded person can easily use it to find the location of your workplace. In late 2016, a new law went into effect that sent chills down the spines of millions of people. Revisions to a U.S. federal security measure called Rule 41 gave the FBI and others more leeway while investigating online activity. The request for subpoenas to get IP addresses (and home addresses) is much easier now. By now, it should be clear that you’re fighting a losing battle when it comes to preventing someone from spying on your public IP address. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. You can get the upper hand in this cat-and-mouse game of shielding your IP address from the world. As you can see, hackers and others can spy on your IP address most of the time while you’re online. But you can make sure that the IP address they capture isn’t traceable back to you 99% of the time. How? By using a Virtual Private Network , or VPN . A VPN, which is an affordable, fee-based online service that masks your actual IP address and routes you through another network with a different IP address. That “borrowed” IP address is the only one anyone in any of the above categories will see. Ready to start hiding your IP address? Check out our reviews of top VPNs to help you choose one.