Right now, the internet is littered with free and paid services that allow anyone to take an IP address and learn details about it like who is operating it or where from. For people or businesses wondering how to find an IP address, these tools are certainly the gift that keeps on giving.
However, as you’re reading this, you might be questioning if looking up someone’s potentially sensitive personal details is ethical. With IP addresses, it’s actually not that simple, and to learn why it’s time we go through a few things.
What Is An IP Address?
Like the address that signifies the physical location of your home, place of work, or favorite café, an IP address is a sequence of numbers that indicates the location of your internet device. IP addresses are issued by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which sells them to internet service providers (ISPs) who assign these numbers to routers, switches, and other devices.
There are two formats of IP addresses: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 is the original version that generally consists of four numbers ranging from 0 to 255, separated by periods (.) e.g. “23.254.250.99”. However, numbers in this 32-bit format are limited, and the number of currently active devices is expected to surpass the combinations possible with this method.
Therefore, 128-bit IPv6 addresses were introduced near the start of the 21st century. These consist of eight numerical quartets with colons as borders, like 2a00:1450:4007:0815:0000:0000:0000:2003, which can be shortened as 2a00:1450:4007:815:0:0:0:2003. This type of addressing allows more than 7.9×1028 as many possible combinations as IPv4.
Rather than designate an address to each device individually, ISPs use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers to do the job automatically. IP addresses can be permanent (static) or constantly changing (dynamic). While static IPs are generally preferred for dedicated server uses, dynamic IPs are cheaper and safer for cybersecurity reasons given their shifting nature.
What Are IP Addresses For, and How Are They Located?
IP addresses serve two purposes: they identify your ISP and indicate the location of your device. Regarding the latter, they cannot pinpoint your exact physical whereabouts. At most, they can narrow it down to the nearest area code.
IP address locations are generally determined by Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) which are used by IANA to deliver available addresses to ISP, which then assign locations based on the RIR’s specifications. However, data mining is another way to “dig up” information about where your internet connection is operating from.
Geolocation databases use this information to gather the location details associated with IP addresses, which they accomplish by determining geographical coordinates. While this allows them to determine the country or city of an IP’s origin with some degree of certainty, they cannot determine precise physical addresses.
These databases can be used by online lookup tools to find more about IP addresses. However, just to reiterate, the exact nature of these details is limited. While many good or premium IP lookup tools can determine the source country, continent, or time zone with over 90% accuracy, this guarantee fizzles to the 70 to 80% range as they narrow it down to state/province, city, or zip code.
What can IP Geolocation be used for?
While geolocation services lack the precision that could allow hackers or spammers to exploit them for negative purposes, looking up IP address locations can serve a number of useful purposes without invading or infringing on privacy rights.
Financial Security
By knowing the digital details of their clients, banks can prevent fraudulent activities like identity theft or “phishing” scams during virtual transactions by confirming the source of the person pretending to be someone else.
Plus, geolocation data can even be used by law enforcement authorities to make sure that the banks themselves do not engage in any suspicious or illegal activity.
Marketing
Geolocation can allow businesses to strategically target a potential audience based on differences in geographic or cultural preferences for goods or services or promote their brand to nearby customers as well as connect with other businesses and potential partners in their vicinity to build up their image.
It also assists in geo advertising and adjusting prices based on exchange rates and laws that determine regional taxation rates.
Conclusion
IP addressing is the reason why we’re able to use the internet effectively. IP addresses not only allow us to communicate with users from other networks, but it does so while maintaining secure connections.
How devices are assigned IP addresses is actually a fairly interesting process from start to finish. Seeing how we’re able to find IP addresses to protect our digital assets and companies to serve their target markets legally shows how far we’ve come with our ability to use online services to our advantage.
