Is there a way to accurately locate an IP address without being part of law enforcement?

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

With all these IP adress threaths people do like "I got your IP adress I will find you" etc and stuff, is it actualyl possible to do so? If so, how?

[Skiiwee29]

2 minutes ago, TheMidnightNarwhal said:

With all these IP adress threaths people do like "I got your IP adress I will find you" etc and stuff, is it actualyl possible to do so? If so, how?

Obviously it happens. Just look at the news reports of "Swatting" happening alot with gamers. This is not a practice that we here at the LTT community condone, and thus we, even if we do know how, will not release the tactics used to gain such knowledge. 

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

1 minute ago, JaredM54 said:

There are plenty of tools that you can find through google that will give you the city that your ISP's head office is located in. With only an IP that is all you can publicly see.

 

Yeah that's what I found out, the only thing you can find out with IP at most is the city.

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Yes. I'm an admin for a game server and can see the IP of every player connected to the server. 

 

There are various tools around that can trace IPs, but the legality of it is somewhat of a grey area. It's not specifically illegal to find a person's IP, but it would raise questions of your intended use for them. 

[Tom is a Door]

10 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

Obviously it happens. Just look at the news reports of "Swatting" happening alot with gamers. This is not a practice that we here at the LTT community condone, and thus we, even if we do know how, will not release the tactics used to gain such knowledge. 

I am just curious how, can you pm me? I can write you down that I won't use it for evil, infact I won't use it all

[Zyndo]

There is absolutely no direct relation to someones IP address and their physical location. Anyone claiming they can find you because they know your IP would be full of shit, OR also have to have direct intimate ties to your ISP. they're the only ones who know exactly where your IP address is physically located. its not something you can just find over the internet.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

15 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

Obviously it happens. Just look at the news reports of "Swatting" happening alot with gamers. This is not a practice that we here at the LTT community condone, and thus we, even if we do know how, will not release the tactics used to gain such knowledge. 

 

Yeah me to I would like to know. 

 

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

There is absolutely no direct relation to someones IP address and their physical location. Anyone claiming they can find you because they know your IP would also have to have direct intimate ties to your ISP. they're the only ones who know exactly where your IP address is physically located. its not something you can just find over the internet.

 

This is why I wanted this thread.

 

Some say yes, some say no. I feel bullshit! Plus, he doesn't want to divulge it either, I'm thinking you're right.

[Zyndo]

I work at an ISP. I'm 100% correct. there is no relation from ones IP address to ones physical location. Just look at VPN's... masking or changing your IP address is so easy nowadays, and you don't even have to get out of your chair to do it lol.

 

Anyone who says "yes" has 0 idea what they're talking about.

[Zyndo]

I mean even law enforcement can't find you just by your IP address. they actually also have to go ask your ISP to discover your location.

[vanished]

Anyone can look up IPs on a variety of websites, but accuracy can vary greatly.  For example, mine points to a location several km away from my actual location.  The only thing that you can be sure of is what country they are in, and even then, that's only true if they aren't using a VPN!  

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

2 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

I mean even law enforcement can't find you just by your IP address. they actually also have to go ask your ISP to discover your location.

 

Exactly. The only thing the IP adress gives you, if it's not altered under VPN, is the ISP and thus you contact the ISP and they check taht IP adress is to who, right? But common sense, they won't give it to anyone.

[Zyndo]

2 minutes ago, JaredM54 said:

I hope you mean you can't find a specific address with an IP, because you can 100% see what state and city it's in.

Go for it. Where in Canada do I live?

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

2 minutes ago, JaredM54 said:

I hope you mean you can't find a specific address with an IP, because you can 100% see what state and city it's in most of the time.

 

Yes but that's nothing. All you know if the city.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Anyone can look up IPs on a variety of websites, but accuracy can vary greatly.  For example, mine points to a location several km away from my actual location.  The only thing that you can be sure of is what country they are in, and even then, that's only true if they aren't using a VPN!  

 

Yeah, an IP geolocate sight I tried an IP on had like 2 city listings, even that isn't 100% accurate.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

3 minutes ago, JaredM54 said:

How would I know what your IP address is? With mine you can see that I live in $town in NJ.

 

It's not accurate 100% of the time. I tried it.

[brwainer]

Geolocation data for IP addresses is inaccurate so often it's somewhat funny. As someone who is involved with this for a smaller ISP, I can assure you that speedtest and other tools that use your IP geolocation are frequently wrong by hundreds of miles for our customers, and we don't know who changes it or how to make our changes stick.

 

Given an IP address, someone with the right access in an ISP can find the address, usually by seeing what modem/ONT the IP is assigned to, and then checking the account for that modem. For ISPs that don't use a modem or ONT (apartment buildings with direct ethernet usually, or sometimes a wireless ISP) then they are going to see what MAC that IP is assigned to, and then track that MAC theough their local ethernet network.

 

None of this info is going to help anyone with swatting, because it is all only useful to someone who is inside the ISP and has the appropriate access credentials to do so. And an ISP worker isn't going to bother tracking down an IP unless ordered to for some legal reason, both because it tales time and because it's an invasion of privacy.

[Stefan1024]

If you are on a phone and have location service on... No big deal to finde you. Google (or apple for that matter) allways know where you are.

 

But the IP alone don't give you accurat information, like it was already said.

[tt2468]

On 7/7/2016 at 10:39 PM, Stefan1024 said:

If you are on a phone and have location service on... No big deal to finde you. Google (or apple for that matter) allways know where you are.

 

But the IP alone don't give you accurat information, like it was already said.

Unless they call your ISP, claiming that they are another rep. The tech will always give you whatever you ask for. Including the address. So theres no direct way, but there is a way.

[.spider.]

On 8.7.2016 at 4:21 AM, legacy99 said:

Obviously it happens. Just look at the news reports of "Swatting" happening alot with gamers. This is not a practice that we here at the LTT community condone, and thus we, even if we do know how, will not release the tactics used to gain such knowledge. 

You are definitely confusing something. 

Without hacking the isp's database an IP is not enough for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

9 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Unless they call your ISP, claiming that they are another rep. The tech will always give you whatever you ask for. Including the address. So theres no direct way, but there is a way.

 

Claiming they are another rep... another rep of the same ISP? Lol, how can they even for that.

[brwainer]

1 minute ago, TheMidnightNarwhal said:

 

Claiming they are another rep... another rep of the same ISP? Lol, how can they even for that.

When you walk into a cellular company's store and need to get certain things done, the employee at the store may have to call someone in their internal support.

 

For example, I had Tmobile, then swapped to AT&T, then back to Tmobile. In the US, when you sign up for a cellphone plan, they do a background check. When Tmobile went to do that the second time, their system glitched out because I had already been a customer in the past. The worker at the store had to call someone to get them to bypass the security check for my account.

 

There are certainly many situations where a store worker would have to call the internal support for help. I'm certain that the "attack" that is going on is working because the attackers are calling the internal support and claiming to be store workers.

[dalekphalm]

19 hours ago, tt2468 said:

Unless they call your ISP, claiming that they are another rep. The tech will always give you whatever you ask for. Including the address. So theres no direct way, but there is a way.

 

10 hours ago, brwainer said:

When you walk into a cellular company's store and need to get certain things done, the employee at the store may have to call someone in their internal support.

 

For example, I had Tmobile, then swapped to AT&T, then back to Tmobile. In the US, when you sign up for a cellphone plan, they do a background check. When Tmobile went to do that the second time, their system glitched out because I had already been a customer in the past. The worker at the store had to call someone to get them to bypass the security check for my account.

 

There are certainly many situations where a store worker would have to call the internal support for help. I'm certain that the "attack" that is going on is working because the attackers are calling the internal support and claiming to be store workers.

Both posts, what you describe is called "Social Engineering", it's the most basic form of Hacking, and is often how hackers back in the 80's and 90's did a lot of their work (Eg: Convincing a security guard to read the IP Address on a modem on his desk).

 

However, for the scenario you describe in your second post, IDEALLY the number they are reaching is:

1. An internally accessible extension (Eg: You can't just call them from anywhere) - this is less likely to be enforced though, for economic/technical reasons

2. Using some sort of employee verification system with an ACL (Access Control List) - basically they should verify your employee name and/or employee number, and compare that against a list of authorized employees.

 

I know that when we call any of our third party support vendors (I work for a Library), we have to provide our names, and in some cases we need to provide a "password" or a site code. For a few of them, they know us by name so know who is authorized.

[brwainer]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

 

Both posts, what you describe is called "Social Engineering", it's the most basic form of Hacking, and is often how hackers back in the 80's and 90's did a lot of their work (Eg: Convincing a security guard to read the IP Address on a modem on his desk).

 

However, for the scenario you describe in your second post, IDEALLY the number they are reaching is:

1. An internally accessible extension (Eg: You can't just call them from anywhere) - this is less likely to be enforced though, for economic/technical reasons

2. Using some sort of employee verification system with an ACL (Access Control List) - basically they should verify your employee name and/or employee number, and compare that against a list of authorized employees.

 

I know that when we call any of our third party support vendors (I work for a Library), we have to provide our names, and in some cases we need to provide a "password" or a site code. For a few of them, they know us by name so know who is authorized.

Yes this is exactly what is happening and how the system should be working, like when we have to call Dish networks (private business-to-business only phone #) to do something with an account for a satellite reciever being used by our company, we have a password we have to provide. My experience with Tmobile is that they aren't really authenticating their employees, and I don't know if the number they call is externally reachable. However it's possible they authenticated in some way through the computer before getting on the phone.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

2 hours ago, Jeffy said:

The Ip address is easily traceable and this is the reason why I started using VPN. Many argue that it doesn't do much good and some say that it gives great protection, but what my major concern is my IP address and my purevpn subscription does it exceptionally well. So, it is adviced that always use a VPN whenever you go online. 

 

Looks like you missed the entire thread. It isn't easily traceable for anyone. Just your ISP and law enforcement, which that, I already know of.