What Can Someone Do With Your IP Address?

VeePN Research Lab

Oct 24, 2023

9 min read

What Can Someone Do With Your IP Address?

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Your IP address consists of a string of numbers given to you by your Internet service provider (ISP). If someone with a sufficient level of skill were to get ahold of your IP, they could really cause you trouble by learning your location, gaining access to your valuable data, hacking your devices, and even stealing your identity.

The bad news is that standard online security methods can be startlingly ineffective against expert hackers. The good news is that VPNs like VeePN are easy to use and provide a wealth of security features, like 256-bit AES encryption, double VPN, Netguard, and more. If you take your privacy seriously, sign up for VeePN right away.

What is an IP address?

An IP address, or Internet Protocol address, is a series of numbers assigned to all devices on a network. These numbers serve as unique identities and allow devices to communicate with each other, whether it’s over the same network or over the internet.

Most IP addresses are, by default, dynamic. This means that your device gets assigned a new address whenever it’s rebooted. A static IP is one that never changes and can be useful if you use certain programs that need to know your address.

What does your IP reveal about you?

Anyone can use your IP to see the location of your ISP. If they know what they’re doing, they can also determine the name of your ISP, as well as your personal physical location. With a little digging, your IP address could lead them to discovering your identity.

This is why it’s important to protect your IP address and privacy at all costs using online privacy tools like VeePN.

Public vs. private IP address

Your public IP address is how your device is identified on the internet. This is the IP address displayed on all the websites you visit. On the other hand, your private IP address is how your device is identified on your private network. Each individual device on your network – computers, laptops, phones, etc. – has its own private IP address to help you distinguish between them. However, once you take any device online they all share the same public IP address.

How to find your IP address

It’s always useful to know your private IP address, especially if you have multiple devices on your network. Each one of them (even your printer) will have a separate address and there could be instances where you’ll need to know what these are.

For example, sometimes two devices on your network will wind up with the same private IP addresses, which will cause connection issues. If this happens, you’ll need to view them so you can see where the conflict lies and change one of the IPs to something unique.

How to find your IP address on Windows 10

Search for “network connections” in the search fieldlocated on your taskbar and click the View network connections option.

Double-click your active connection to bring up the Ethernet Status window.

The red X signifies a connection is inactive

Click the Details button.

Your connection speed and how long you've been online

You’ll see a list of information. The string of numbers labeled IPv4 Default Gateway will be your private IP address.

How to find your IP address on Mac

Click the Apple icon located in the top left corner of the screen.
From the drop-down menu, select System Preferences.

Hit the Apple icon and go to Preferences

Find the Network icon and click it.

Select your network and the IP address will be displayed in the top right corner, under Connected.

How to find your IP address on iOS

Go to Settings and tap Wi-Fi.

Find the network you’re connected to and tap the blue circle with the ‘i’ on the right.

Your connected network will have a blue check next to it

Scroll down to see your IP address.

How to find your IP address on Android

Go to Settings > Network and Internet.

Network and Internet should be at the top

Tap Internet.

Your current network should also be at the top

Tap your connected network.

Scroll down to find your IP address.

How to find your public IP address with VPN

Finding your public IP address is easy. Just go to What’s my IP page on VeePN’s website, and you’ll see your IP address, as well as your ISP’s location.

When you’re protected with a VPN, your IP address and your browsing location will be altered.

What can a hacker do with an IP address?

If a hacker gets hold of your IP address, there are a few things that they could do with it, and none of them will benefit you. As mentioned above, they can use your IP address to track your internet activity and even figure out your identity which may lead to identity theft fraud.

They can also use your address to gain access to devices on your network and use them in DDoS attacks.

How can someone hack your IP?

There are a few ways to get someone’s IP address and some of them are frighteningly easy. You don’t have to be a technical wizard to access this private information, as sometimes people don’t even realize they’re giving it out.

Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly common. According to security company Cisco, in 2021, 90% of data breaches happened due to phishing. We’ve all received strange emails asking us to click suspicious links. These are designed to “phish” for information, including your IP address, and sadly many people fall for them. What’s worse is that legitimate advertisements do this too. Some of those website ads you click record your IP address and, for them, it’s just business as usual.

If you torrent files, you expose your IP address. Torrenting isn’t illegal in and of itself. While it’s commonly used for piracy, it’s also an effective method of sharing perfectly legal files.

However, torrenting uses the peer-to-peer method, meaning that everyone who downloads the file continues to share it to new downloaders. This puts you in a list of “seeds,” which displays your IP address. Obviously, this presents a huge risk. A VPN can hide your IP, so we highly recommend using a reliable VPN anytime you torrent anything.

Finally, some email servers actually list your IP address in the heading of emails you send out. Make sure that your server doesn’t do this If it does, sign up for a more secure service like Gmail.

How do I know if my IP address has been hacked?

There’s no straightforward solution to figuring out if your IP address has been hacked. It’s like asking if someone has your bank account information. You won’t know until you start to see suspicious activity. In that sense, the red flags will be the same as if someone got ahold of your social security number or your bank card.

If you start to see weird activity on various accounts across the internet — social media, online banking, etc — there’s a good chance that someone has stolen your identity. If all of the suspicious activity is contained to one website, then it’s probably just that one account that has been breached.

Another clue that can point towards a hacker as the culprit is if strange programs start to pop up on your computer. This means your computer and network are directly involved, and someone has access to your system. If this is the case, you need to start taking all of the necessary steps to secure your computer and information by contacting tech support or an antivirus company.

Is my IP address secure?

If you’re serious about protecting your IP, you have two options: proxy server and VPNs. However, proxy servers have a major drawback. While they do safeguard your IP address when surfing the internet, proxy servers can still cache sensitive information such as usernames and passwords.

While it’s important to hide your IP, it’s just as important to secure the rest of your information, too. Since proxy servers fail to do this, it’s hard to recommend them. Premium VPNs like VeePN, on the other hand, don’t really have any major downsides.

Safeguard your IP with VPN

Instead of worrying about how hackers can access your IP address and what they can do with it, focus on making sure it never happens in the first place. The best (and some would argue only) way to really ensure your information is protected is through a robust VPN service like VeePN.

VeePN offers a variety of features to keep your data secure, like top-level encryption, DNS leak prevention, and multiple VPN protocols. It also offers unlimited bandwidth and speed, because you shouldn’t have to sacrifice those things for the sake of security. Another crucial feature VeePN offers is a Kill Switch. This automatically disconnects all of your devices the moment your connection to the VPN fails.

Using VeePN couldn’t be easier.

Launch VeePN and hitthe button to turn on the VPN connection

Surf the net without worrying about your data’s safety!

Protect Your Data at all Costs

In January 2022, Embroker reported that cybercrime was up 600%. We only hear about the major attacks aimed at corporations, but smaller attacks happen all of the time.

At one time, VPNs were used occasionally to circumvent geo-restrictions. Now, you can easily make the case that VPNs should be second nature. More and more people are using them whenever they go online, and it might be time for you to consider doing the same thing.

Cyber threats have increased 81% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic might be slowing down but cyberattacks aren’t. It’s time to take internet privacy seriously and invest in a VPN solution. For a very reasonable price, VeePN can save you untold amounts of pain and data loss in the future.