Finding someone's IP address

[ronaldo82k]

i heard u can direct connect with a buddy and then track their IP and their location,,,,,,,is that possible?

[Slum]

Its possible for the person you are talking to to insert their IP address, there is no way that I know that you can get someone's IP address... but if there was I don't understand why you would need someone's IP address, and I'm pretty sure nobody would post it on the Forums if there was...

[om4eccv]

Anytime you send a file, connect to talk, or direct connect, you can get the other person's IP address. All you need is a program that will show you your current TCP/IP connections.

The reasoning behind this is that unless you do one of the above, all IMs that you send go to AOL, and then to whomever you're chatting with. When you send a file, DC, or talk, you're (usually) sending a ton more data, which would strain the AIM servers. Instead, AIM connects so you can send data directly to another user. To do this, both AIM clients need to know the other person's IP address.

Most software firewalls will alert you when you start "serving" a connection like this. I'm not a big fan of those. Instead, my favorite is a little program called TCPview from http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/tcpview.shtml I like it because I can show either internet names, or IP addresses. It also puts a green highlight on the line of a new connection, and a red highlight on a closed connection. On Windows 2000/XP, it will also show you what program is using that connection.

I'll try to include a screen capture, but this is only my second post here.

[Free2bladefuture]

Hey there is a very easy way to get what you want>>!! you said you wanted to know how to get the ip address from someone well thats all you need is dos command promt. what you do is you go in to command promt and type "netstat" after you send somthing or get direct connected or when you get a voice convo. its that easy i dont know if this will help or not but i try bye

[Jeff]

Ronaldo82k, just because you have their IP address (which as others have pointed out, isn't really too difficult to do), that does not mean you can find their location.

Nearly everyone you meet on the Internet is using an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to connect to the Internet. The ISP registers a block of IP addresses for their users, so if you do a reverse DNS lookup, the best you'll get is the address of the ISP's administrative offices. Try that on one of the 50 million AOL users and you'll get an address in Virginia (where AOL is based). The user may be in Calfornia or even further away. But at least you'll know what planet they're on.

[SkZ]

Lol.. I G3t a r3al Laph @ you guys. Whanting to "l3arn" how to hack.. To b3com3 a hack3r It takes, Int3llig3nce,Pati3nce,Quick Thinking,A Uniqu3 Styl3 that fits yours3lf. Typ3 of Hack3r you r3ally ar3.. W3ll I cn't 3xplain it all in on3 lump som3 but, I will giv3 you a bit of advic3. Go L3arn the ">PYTHON< $ >P3RL< Languages.. Once you l3arn enough ("You will know wh3n your r3ady") Th3n and th3n only, ar3 you actually ready to b3com3 a "ha*k3r". Now th3r3 ar3 p3opl3 that will not agr33 with m3. But this is all I have to say to th3m. "NO MATT3R WHAT, I M3AN WHAT, YOU WILL N3V3R B3 AS GOOD OR HAV3AS MUCH KNOWL3G3 OUT "HA*KING" OR ANYTHING OF TH3 SORT "W3" TH3 "Oldtim3rs" AR3 YOUR 3LD3RS AND YOU WILL N3V3R KNOW AS MUCH AS W3 DO...
Now this isn't a thr3at to you guys or anything. But I was skimming th3 n3t in proxies and I come across "this" Lol... If you have any qu3stions plz f3al fr33 to ask. But ON3 MOR3 THING. YOU DO NOT. I M33N DO NOT B3G A HACK3R TO T3ACH YOU HOW TO HA*K!..! THAT SHOWS IMATURITY AND AND UNPATI3NC3N3SS.

*SkZ* UNIX LUB M3MB3R.

[Mimyo]

*SkZ* UNIX LUB M3MB3R.



^---------------------------------------------this guy's funny....he know's maybe alot of hackin but nothing of physiology and how people tick....he has bad grammer too....but meh....o well thanks for the tip tho.

[ITGeniusGuru]

A while ago, I was getting a lot of Nigerian, Chadian and Ivorian girls hitting me on Yahoo Messenger pretending to be beautiful blond girls (with - of course - fake pictures), and I was looking for a way to find IP address of the person I 'm chatting with in Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger. I did an extensive search and found a web site that - after you set-up your account - you direct the person you are chatting with to (tell them - for instance - you have a recent picture of yourself there) and if that person clicked on the link you sent, the web site would capture their IP Address and email it to you (with country associated with that address). And it worked well!! Unfortunately, my computer crashed and I lost that web site's address
Anyone run across it?

[Gandalf]

ITGeniusGuru, there's not much point in finding out their IP address. You won't get their exact location -- just the country and maybe the region.

The only thing you could do with their IP address is evil -- directing a denial of service attack at their IP, for example. And in reality, it probably wouldn't be hurting them since they generally "work" from Internet cafes. If one has a problem, they just pick up and move to the next one.

The best thing you can do is simply block them.

Now, if you're determined to find it, I would suggest using netstat. Assuming you're running some flavor of Windows, open a command window (Start > Run > cmd) and type netstat.

With netstat, you can see the active connections of your computer. netstat has options to show either names or addresses, and you can give an interval to refresh, so that it checks and shows connections every, say, 12 seconds.

Like this:

netstat -a -n 12

'netstat /?' will show more options

So if you're computer has an active connection with another computer, e.g. by communication software or file exchange software such as netmeeting, ICQ, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer applications, ... netstat will show that computer's IP address, and the TCP port it is using to communicate with your computer.

Of course, when the communication passes trough a server (eg MSN chat), you'll only see the IP address of that server. You'd have to do a direct connect or file transfer -- something that establishes a connecting with that other computer.

[ITGeniusGuru]

Gandalf, Thank you for your reply. I have been chatting now for a couple of days with a girl that I dated a while ago. She tells me she is currently in a certain country in the Middle East and I do not believe her.
So all I really want is to know what country she is in. Well, I was so determined, that I did another "extensive search" on the Internet and found a few intersting things. All you have stated is aboslutely correct but allow me to tell everyone what I have found-out

- On another post on this same discussion baord, someone posted the following link: www(dot)checkim(dot)com but they charge $2.99 a week for providing the service and - being cheap as I am - I did not go for it.

- While chatting with her, I sent her a music file and she started to download it, but it was done using Yahoo Messenger's "Send File" icon, so all I got when I ran netstat was an IP address in the US for that file transfer (and I know certainly she can not be in the US). I ran netstat immediately before starting the file transfer and during the transfer and compared the netstat results (by the way, you can direct the result of the command to a text file by adding ">filename.txt" - without the quotation marks - to the end of the command).
I guess the file transfer through that icon just establishes a connection between your PC and some Yahoo server that handles the transfer. I also had my webcam on and she was watching it and for that I had a different IP address in the US
To get HER IP address, I obviously had to establish a "direct" file transfer between my PC and hers. Well... everyone talks about that wholy grail of "direct" connection but how do you actually do it? I am not sure, but maybe if you ran a personal FTP or web server on your PC? I didn't look any deeper into it.

- I found a post somewhere (that I cannot find again right this moment) where someone gave a few lines of PHP code to insert into a page on a web site and then direct the person you are chatting with to. When the code executes, it reads the IP address of the visitor to the page and emails it to you. I tried that and waited... and waited, then waited some more for the email message to arrive, it never did. But I was intrigued by that and did further search and found www(dot)plus2net(dot)com/php_tutorial/php_ip.php
So if you are handy with programming in PHP (I am not!), here's the solution, simple, easy and obvious!

- Luckily, I have a web site to which I have access and I can modify its content, so I finally found the solution

www(dot)tracemyip(dot)org offers a free service to those who want to track visitors to a web site (for marketing purposes). And it's FREE for up to 3 projects. How does it work: You set-up the free account, you download some HTML code that you insert into your web site and when a person visits the web site, the code displays the vistor's IP address (on the same page he/she is visitig) and *LOGS* their IP address and some other useful info used for marketing purposes (such as referring site, how long they stayed on a page, where did they navigate next etc...)
Well... after I set-up a web page that contained some jokes, I added the HTML code to it at the very bottom of the page and asked my ex-girlfriend to visit the page to read some funny jokes. Well.. she got a kick out of the jokes and I got the information I needed Actually, when I checked tracemyip(dot)org immediately after she visited the page, I almost fell off my chair. Not only my suspicion was confirmed, but I also got the exact city where she is located (which is the city where I know she lived when we dated) and more information that I needed.

Finally, one last note... I now live in a different country other than the one she lives in (it was a long-distance relationship before we met), and we are separated by thousands of miles, so I did not have any harrassment intentions when I set out to find what country she lives in