Most of us believe that our IP address can be tracked only by the Internet Service Provider. Did you know that there are multiple ways in which someone can spy on your IP address? Anybody knowing one of these techniques can easily reveal your IP address. To spy on your IP address, they do not need your permission. Spying on someone's IP address can be used to trace cyberbullying as well as bad intentions.

IP address reveals some vital information about you. This includes details about your Internet Service Provider and your location. While these are basic information, there are more intelligent systems that can also track OS versions, browsers, and device information. Now the question is why would someone be interested in knowing your IP address?

Reasons Why someone may spy on your IP address

A business may want to spy IP addresses to track your location. This helps them target you with better offers and Ads. They can build a suitable preference profile that can help to obtain more customers. Your IP can be used to track, block, or target you.

A hacker may spy on your IP address to track your events and use your IP address to their advantage. Intruders can use sophisticated techniques along with your IP address to hack your systems.

• As a user, you would want to browse the Internet with full freedom and have no fear of any privacy invasions.


• You would not prefer to be bombarded with Ads the moment you visit any website.


• Security about online transactions is the biggest fear. The transactions should be protected.

With the absence of net neutrality an ISP can throttle your bandwidth based on your IP or charge you additionally based on the content you browse. Irrespective of the intention, there are multiple reasons why someone would want to spy on your IP address.

Ways to Spy someone's IP address

Below are a few techniques that can be employed to spy on someone's IP address.

• Borrowing someone's computer: This is one of the easiest techniques to steal someone's IP address. You can borrow the computer and can find out the IP address either by using ipconfig /all command or by using an online service such as iplocation to find IP address details.


• Wireless network: This can happen if your wireless network is not secure enough or if you have shared the credentials of the wireless network with a guest. A person having access to your wireless network will also share your public IP address. In most routers, you have an option to view who is connected to the wireless network. This makes it simpler to capture your public and private IP addresses.

In case you do not find the IP information from your router, you may also use an online IP scanner. This will provide a list of IP addresses that are shared and makes your task simpler to find the IP you wish to spy.

• Emails: Most of the email providers today do not display IP addresses in the header. However certain less popular email service providers or self-hosted mail servers may be revealing the IP address of your public IP address. There are also trace email tools that allow you to trace the sender's IP address from the mail headers.


• Web bugs or Web Beacons: This is one of the simplest ways to spy and get someone's IP address. This technique can be used over emails or web pages and can be used to track IP addresses. Only the user needs to access the web page or open the email whereby the sending server can track the IP address.


• Blog comments: This is an interesting way to spy on someone's IP address. If you are the blog administrator and someone happens to comment on your blog, then along with the comments you can also get the IP address of the author.


• Logging: If you have a website and are trying to capture the IP addresses of users who have accessed your website, then this is extremely simple. Most web development languages enable tracking remote IP addresses which are easily detectable from the request header.

For instance, the client-side HTTP header X-FORWARDED-FOR can provide the remote IP details. Or, on the server side, the programming language provides utilities to obtain an IP address(es) of the computer requesting the page, such as getRemoteAddr().

This information, based on the underlying technology can be captured in the web server logs or tracked in a persistent system such as a Database.

• Internet Forums: As online users, most of us tend to be part of multiple forums. The intention here is to discuss and share topics. However, along with forum posts, there are also a few other pieces of information that can be accessible to the administrator. One of this easily accessible information is the IP address. So, if you own a discussion forum, then it's easy to spy user's IP address as well.


• Social Media Channels: While we all enjoy being on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and others, a less-known fact is that your information gets shared. The IP address is easily traceable by site administrators or among site users. If you do not own a social media network, then how do you spy on someone's IP address? Well, that is simply by adding a clickable link that takes the user to your website. This way you can also capture the user's IP address.
  
  A similar technique is used by most e-commerce platforms where a link or an image is used to track IP addresses, commonly known as a web beacon.


• E-commerce and messaging apps: Our IP Tracker tool allows you to create trackable links. Providing these links to the user whose IP you wish to trace can help you track the IP address the moment this link is accessed.


• HostName: In case you are aware of a hostname of the machine and if this is accessible or within the same LAN, then you can easily spy on the IP address. This can be done by issuing a host hostname command over a Linux machine. As an output of this command, you would be able to see the IP address.
  
  Similarly, the ping or nslookup command can be used to get the IP address. In case you do not know the hostname and want to spy an IP address on the LAN, then you can use the command arp -a. This will provide IP and Mac details of all computers available on the network.


• Netstat command: Netstat is by and large one of the most used commands by network administrators. However, this can also be used to trace IP addresses. To trace someone's IP address, you can use social media networks such as Facebook. Ensure to close all other windows on your computer and initiate a chat with the person whose IP address needs to be traced.
  
  Once you initiate the chat, use netstat command as "netstat -an". This will provide all details of all the established connections, including IP addresses. From here you can trace the location of each IP address and thereby deduce the target's messenger IP address. While this does not directly give the user's IP address, you can still get the messenger's IP address.

How do you protect your IP address?

Utilizing cloud services can be an effective strategy for safeguarding your IP address and enhancing online privacy and security. When accessing the internet through cloud services, your IP address is masked by the cloud provider's infrastructure, making it more challenging for unauthorized parties to trace your online activities back to your specific device or location. Additionally, cloud services often employ encryption protocols to protect data transmission, further enhancing the confidentiality of your IP address and other sensitive information. By leveraging the robust security measures and infrastructure provided by reputable cloud service providers, businesses and individuals can mitigate the risk of IP address exposure and unauthorized access to their online activities. Furthermore, cloud-based virtual private networks (VPNs) offer an additional layer of protection by routing internet traffic through encrypted tunnels, effectively anonymizing IP addresses, and enhancing overall cybersecurity posture.