Your IP Address: What it is and What it Reveals About You
Your IP address is like your phone number. It’s a unique number assigned to you when you’re connected to the Internet. Your IP address can be static – that is fixed and unchanging – or it can be dynamic – meaning it changes every time you connect to the internet or semi-static meaning it changes from time to time. Most of us now have static IP addresses.
Your IP address is logged by every website you visit and can be used to identify you right down to your city and country — and with a court order your name and address and phone number.
However, unless there is some reason for the authorities to issue a court order to find out who you are, IP addresses simply remain on Web server logs along with the time and date when you accessed the site(s). Every web server captures your IP address – and no ad-blocker or do-not-track or other browser extensions which claim to keep your browsing private do.
Additionally, your ISP logs everything you do and everywhere you go on the Internet.
Go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ and click on the IP Lookup button at the top. Wait a few seconds. You can see that it shows a lot about you even -in most cases – the city and country you’re in and even your longitude and latitude.
Here are some other sites where you can learn more about your IP address and what it reveals about you.
https://www.iplocation.net/find-ip-address
https://www.whatismyip-address.com/
You can run but you can’t hide.
Your IP address is logged on every website you visit, and so are the date and time you visited. Your IP address is on every email you send, including the date and time you sent it. Whatever you do and wherever you go, your IP address is unique and it identifies you whenever you do anything on the Internet.
All those browser toolbars that claim to hide your identity or prevent you from being tracked are all smoke and mirrors, they don’t work. Someone, somewhere, is seeing you’re real IP address no matter how hard you try to hide it. If you use a privacy browser to hide your IP address from websites, your real IP is still known by the browser and ostensively the company who makes the browser
Keep in mind, that if you live in a small community and your ISP is one of the national ones like Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, etc. It may show your location as the nearest server location, most likely in a big city nearest you – and even then you can be located and identified by your IP address. Your ISP knows and if your ISP knows anyone with the authority can know.
The only way you can really hide your IP address is by using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service that does not log your IP address and which is located in a country where individual privacy is still a right and is still protected. And even then, the VPN company knows your real IP address. And even if they claim they do not log your web activity, who’s to say they don’t?
Privacy on the Internet is more of an illusion than ever.