Question:
How often do IP Addresses change?
Steve
2017-03-08 01:04:58 UTC
I was recently on a website that said it logs IP Addresses (then stated my IP address), when a website logs your IP, does that information ever become inaccurate and useless?

NOTE: And before someone accuses me of doing anything Illegal, this was on the clear web and was not on a site hosting any illegal content.
Eight answers:
Nuff Sed
2017-03-10 03:53:44 UTC
Too many variables to guess, since it may be static (never changes) for each device at your location, or assigned dynamically, a different address each time you attempt to connect to the ISP. It doesn't really matter, since your ISP keeps the logs of which user was using which IP at any given moment. You should always ASSUME that the sites you're connecting to are logging your IP at all times.



In theory, if your IP address shows up in the logs during some investigation of an important violation, your ISP would be served with a subpoena to get your address, and you'd get a knock on the door by a process server, if not law enforcement.
?
2017-03-08 21:56:03 UTC
It depends on your ISP. You MAY have a static IP address that never changes. But most likely for a home user, your ISP has a block of addresses for customers, and it just assigns you one that is free each time you connect - so you have a dynamic IP address that could change daily or more often.



However, in case the police ever need to know because they think you were doing something illegal, the ISP will keep a log of who was connected to which IP address when, so they can trace you from that. I know they keep the logs for at least a few years because cases of passing around child pornography have been tracked down this way even a few years later.
WRG
2017-03-08 15:36:47 UTC
That depends on your provider. I have a static IP that ever changes. Before that I had one that changed everytime the router was rebooted.



But even if my IP changes my ISP know that I had it at any given time in the past.
ZCT
2017-03-08 12:49:27 UTC
I don't think it matters when the IP address changes.



Any decent website that is monitoring you will remember the IP address AND the exact time whatever you did took place. So law enforcement could subpoena for the ISP to figure out WHO was using that IP address at that exact time.
Bob B
2017-03-08 06:22:22 UTC
They do generally change, although not always, and the extent to which they change varies between servers. There are also potentially records of this as well. They will usually become useless eventually, however. Here's how it works:



Your ISP (internet service provider) owns a range of IP addresses, and assigns them to clients, including you. They can more or less assign IP's as they want. In some cases, an IP is "static" meaning it belongs to the same client for a long time, and some are "dynamic", meaning that they change. Bigger organizations may have a static IP's, whereas other home users often don't.



In some cases, you will retain the same IP as long as you are connected to the internet. Often this connection remains open if your modem is still turned on even if all the computers are turned off, so to completely disconnect, you may have to turn off the modem (I'd pull it out of its socket although you don't need to do this) and even then you may have to leave it unplugged for a few hours if not a bit longer, before the ISP recognises that IP as no longer in use and reassigns it. It's been a few years since I've ever checked mine, but I usually found that if I pulled it out and left it overnight, it would have changed by the next day. Alternatively, if we went overseas for a few weeks, it was always new by the time we got back.



So that's the first bit. The next part is whether or not the ISP keeps any logs of what your IP actually was. Your ISP may not actually retain this information for very long either- they usually retain it a bit for billing purposes, but often they may not hold it that long afterwards. Some countries now have laws on this, though- increasingly, many countries are requiring ISP's keep a record of which IP's were given to which people, often for about 2 years or so, but check local laws on this.



There are also various tricks with VPN's or proxies or whatever to hide your IP, which is a whole other story. And furthermore, people frequently get very concerned about IP's, who can trace them, how to hide them, and so forth, but often they aren't the issue at hand. There are two reasons why:



* ISP's will usually only give this information out with a court order or to law enforcement, which usually requires fairly serious matters for them to get involved. Beyond that, nobody can legally get this information most of the time.



* In many cases, good old-fashioned detective work is much more important and often more effective than simply IP tracing. No amount of IP hiding will protect you from this if you don't know what you're doing.



There was once some guy from Harvard or MIT or one of those places, who thought he'd send a bomb threat to the college to get out of an exam (to this day I wonder how anyone who thought this was a remotely good idea got into a top-level college in the first place, but anyway). He thought he'd covered all his tracks real well- he'd hidden his IP behind a VPN, and then he used some special email service that concealed his email address and the (already fake) IP he was using. Real slick, right?



Not so much- the FBI, upon reading the threats, realised pretty quick that the bomber was almost certainly someone from the university in question, and lo and behold, only one student from the university was using that VPN at the time the threats were sent. Busted.



To be fair, even then, if he'd kept his mouth shut and said, well, thousands of people use that service, it's probably a coincidence, he might have gotten away with it, but he was so shocked they had found him he gave it up. Which goes to show- you need more than just IT skills to deal with the cops.



So basically- there's no hard-and-fast answer on how long IP addresses change. The information will, in almost all cases, go out of date eventually, but it takes time, and furthermore, in all but a few circumstances, it doesn't matter.
STEVEN F
2017-03-08 02:47:58 UTC
Anywhere from hourly, to NEVER. Unless you have your own server, 'your' IP address actually belongs to your ISP. They can assign a different IP address each time you access the internet, or assign a 'static' IP address that remains 'yours' as long as your account is active.



In any case, they will ALWAYS know who was using a given IP address at any given time.
2017-03-08 01:27:52 UTC
can be useless bc can be faked, spoofed.



MAC, too.
2017-03-08 01:09:34 UTC
Depends on your ISP. You often have a static IP that never changes, but you can get a dynamic IP which changes occasionally at the time your lease is renewed by the node. Some are set for 10 hours for example.



There is a log on the node which keeps your hardware MAC address, so if you do anything stupid, it will be tracked right back to your modem or wifi adapter.


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