Question:
Can someone really find out your physical street address by tracing your ip address ?
2010-11-22 17:23:38 UTC
Some forum moderator stalked me about a couple of weeks ago because I got him pissed off because I created a bunch of nicknames on his forum. He then threatened me to go away from his forum or else he will forward information he knows about me to international countries who are runned by a communist party country authorities so in case I try to visit that country they would give me a hard time. He threatened to give my information to countries such as Vietnam, Korea and China. This forum moderator also said to me in a post saying if you think changing your ip address will stop us from sniffing you out you must be seriously mistaken because we have the capability to do so and bill you an invoice for spamming. It's been 3 weeks and there's no invoice so that must be a good thing. I asked one of my friends who works at a best buy store geek squad and he says no one can get your name and physical address by tracing your ip address because it would only give the city and state and ISP provider. My friend also says that because my ip address is dynamic it's going to be very hard for him to track me because my ip address changes constantly. This forum moderator lives in thailand and he is the creator of that forum website and he is an english man. I have the latest version of Norton Internet Security and I'm wonder if that will protect me from this psycho. Can someone find out my physical address by tracing my ip address ??? Am I safe on the internet ???
Three answers:
2010-11-22 17:29:09 UTC
They can definitely find your physical address from your ip. Your ip is basically your computer address. The numbers represent where you are, where your internet is from, so on. Your ip may be dynamic, but the numbers all are variations of the same meaning.



If they are really going to take legal action they just need an attorney to subpoena the ISP for your address on legal grounds (like invoicing for spamming).



There are also some websites that claim to be able to take your IP and give you a physical address, I'm unaware of their legitimacy though.
2010-11-22 17:27:16 UTC
Your friend is right, he can't get the street address of a dynamic ip address.

The only to get that is to get a court order first, considering you did nothing illegal that is not going to happen.



The best that guy can do with just the ip address is that he would know what your ISP is and the ISP location, but not your location.

As long as your real full name was not posted on that forum or clues about your idently, there is no way he would be able to find you.
Bobby Crosby
2010-11-22 17:26:53 UTC
He is a liar, he has no clue where you live nor has he done anything else he has claimed. I'm sure he likes to think China cares that you were trolling his forum, but nobody cares about his forum. You can not determine the address of a person by their IP address.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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