IP address - Traceable to your house address?

justagirl

I was just wondering how IP Addresses work..... if you have a gmail account - can it be traced to the computer you use and also to the house that you are using it from? (using broadband)....

Thanks....:)

E39MSport

edit: - got answer confused with physical address rather than a mail account. retract.

However, gmail probably trace ip addresses and your ISP will make the link between you and the IP so you are more than likely traceable.

kmick

In theory yes. Use a brand new gmail account via a proxy in an internet cafe and never use that account or cafe again if you want to be ultra safe. Pay in cash and wear sunglasses.

JohnK

Yes and no. For the average person the closest they'll get is to know who your internet service provider is although depending on how its set up they might be able to narrow it down to the area of the city you’re in but they wont get an actual home address. On the other hand your ISP will have a log of which IP address was assigned to a particular account so if someone was able to compel your ISP to release that information then yes they probably could get your address.

So basically yes its possible but they'd want a good reason to be looking for it rather than idle curiosity.

fergalr

justagirl wrote: »

I was just wondering how IP Addresses work..... if you have a gmail account - can it be traced to the computer you use and also to the house that you are using it from? (using broadband)....

Thanks....:)

Traced by whom? Someone you send an e-mail to? Google? Your ISP? The government?

If you are concerned enough to ask, the answer is probably 'yes'.


Your ISP will have, and store for some time, a list of which IPs were used by which customers when. That ultimately connects the two, and is probably the easiest IP/identification match.

But even aside from that, we are rarely anonymous on the Internet.
You mentioned Gmail. Google will probably know who you are at any given time, unless you are extremely careful. Your searching habits are stored, and say a lot about you - you probably have googled your own name at some stage, or used google to search for a range of queries that over time could uniquely identify you - your college courses, or school, or address, or your friends etc. So google, who run gmail, will probably know who you are.
(its a bit complex, with IPs and search queries, and cookies etc). Google analytics is also over a lot of this web - boards probably runs it, which means google, maybe indirectly, maybe knows you posted here.
Now, they might not be putting this all together - but I'd be careful about assuming you were anonymous, its very hard to be fully anonymous, and easy to leak information.

A lot of other services you use might also leak enough information to identify you from your IP (mapping sites, access to facebook (friends pages, your page), a whole lot of things.

Anyone upstream of you (closer to the internet than your computer, if you want to think of it like that) like your ISP, or college network, would also be able to find out who you are, similarly.

Again, much of this depends on some big company or organisation caring enough about you to look this stuff up. I'm not sure how much of its stored automatically, but I'd assume a fair bit is, at least for a while (months or years).

If you provide more details on your query, could answer more specifically.

justagirl

Thanks for all the replies... love the one about the sunglasses and paying in cash

I am really just interested to know: if a person or a company with whom someone is emailing could track them down to their own house and if they wanted to do this would they have to contact each internet service provider and each email provider i.e. google etc.... like for example if someone wanted to stalk someone or if some company wanted to find out the address of someone who emailed them...(I promise nothing dodgy - just mere interest!!!)

fergalr

justagirl wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies... love the one about the sunglasses and paying in cash

I am really just interested to know: if a person or a company with whom someone is emailing could track them down to their own house and if they wanted to do this would they have to contact each internet service provider and each email provider i.e. google etc.... like for example if someone wanted to stalk someone or if some company wanted to find out the address of someone who emailed them...(I promise nothing dodgy - just mere interest!!!)

The e-mail server that sends the mail will often pass on the address of the IP that first sent the mail. So whoever receives the mail will have that IP address.
How much the recipient of the email can tell from that will vary.
In general, they probably can't tell exactly who you are, unless they have some other information to identify you to the IP, such as search logs such as google would have, or the server logs facebook have of you logging into your profile etc - the kind of thing I previously mentioned.

Sometimes IPs dont change much over time (depends on the details of your internet connection and how your ISP manages it). If your IP doesnt change over a long time then obviously you leave your IP->details on more and more servers (anytime you buy something, for instance, or post to boards, your IP is stored). So, if whoever you are e-mailing has something like this (maybe you logged into their site once a while back, or bought something from them) they could find you. Again, most companies won't have this, as you don't buy stuff or log into most peoples websites - but its something to bear in mind.

A final thing is that if you have an IP that hasn't changed over time, its not impossible that someone determined comes to that IP trying to find you. Maybe they port scan the IP and look for an Instant Messenger client which they connect to, to find out who is at that IP, or maybe they try compromise the router listening at it etc. This is all fairly sophisticated stuff (although I remember seeing script kiddy tools about 10 years ago that would find out what IM id was at an IP, for example - maybe the IM protocols are better now).

Again, a lot depends on determination - some people might try e-mail you something that compromises your computer somehow, that could tell them who you are. This is sort of outside the scope of what you are asking, but if you are going to have an e-mail exchange with someone, and you dont want them to know where you are, the take home message here is to be very careful - its easy to let something slip if you are dealing with a determined or sophisticated adversary.
Don't try hide from someone sophisticated and determined, particularly if its an ongoing thing. If someone is willing to compromise systems upstream of your last known IP, they will find you. But again, this is sophisticated stuff.

I would say to you that you are not technically sophisticated enough to do this with certainty, so go down the road of the Internet cafe if its something important.
Theres always onion routing e-mail as well, and all sorts of sophisticated things like that you can do to cover your tracks if you feel so inclined.

In a nutshell, other random people you email wont have ready access to your address from your IP. If you are dealing with people with more resources than that, its much harder to do. Theres plenty of info out there on the internet to read about this sort of thing.

justagirl

fergalr - thank you very much for your very detailed reply, my question has been answered

your reply has really made me think about what information about me (albeit uninteresting!) is 'out there' .... thanks again.

Gadfly

This might interest you:
http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/docs/details.html :cool: