IPv6 Locator Now Available on IPGP

September 4th, 2014

We are happy to announce that we have just released an IPv6 Address Lookup tool. This tool is aimed to complete our tool collection, which includes: IPv4 Address Lookup, Find Someones IP Address tool and Geolocation API.

IPv6 addresses were introduced to fix the problem with the shortage of IPv4 IP addresses. It si considered that IPv4 addresses were already exhausted about 3 years ago. However, because the IPv6 are not that popular, they cannot be used alone. Many web servers does not have ipv6 support yet and the computers using only ipv6 won't be able to access. However, many Internet Service Providers started to assign IPv6 addresses to their users, as an alternative for IPv4, which are still used but usually shared along many computers.

Here you can access the IPv6 Address Locator.

IP Address Location Databases, a Violation of User Privacy ?

June 17th, 2014

no-privacy

With the latest situation created by NSA and their spying mission, the online privacy become an important aspect in our Internet Usage. Although some can say that only if you do bad things you fear for this, online privacy should still concern those who don't and never plan do to something stupid. The problem is that the data is traced and then stored, and if someday you learn something about an important person, or you want to do something that some people won't like, they might search trough your online history and what you did online to find facts about your life would put you in a bad light with the purpose of dropping the issue. Another problem is that this data, as it was shown by Edward Snowden, can be accessed by almost anyone who is somehow related to the NSA.

Getting back to public data that anyone can access, here comes the IP Address. While it is not that easy for someone to get the exact location based on your IP Address and find who you are, in most cases he can find out the city you live in. Is this a big issue ? In 99% of cases it is not an issue. Most websites are not interested in your location for other reason than marketing purposes: seeing where the most visitors are coming from to be able to provide better services. Website knowing your approximate location can also mean that when you go to a website you will be shown content relevant to your location without searching for it, for example weather websites, big online stores. But, there will be websites who can use your location to do things that many will consider bad, for example some websites might block your access to the website if you are located in a certain country or a certain state, based purely on their experience with past users from your location. This is considered discrimination and website owners should be charged for this. Websites can have different prices for people in different places ( based on the purchase power and average income ), that is also illegal in most countries.

Despite there are legal actions against those type of websites who do such kind of things, the real problem here is if a bad intended person can do harm to you if he knows your IP Address. Well, since most websites keep this data private, if you visit a trap site building only for this purpose, he can watch your actions without you being aware of this. For example he gives you a link to an online survey and he ask you do complete it. You might not be aware but the survey is a trap site and he gets the results associated with your IP Address. I mean, you should not complete online surveys providing sensitive data unless you trust the source, but more creative guys can find ways to trick you into this.

Maybe the question that anyone have is if someone can find you and "meet you" in person starting only from your IP Address. If the creativity on one side is at a certain level, and the ignorance is on the other side, then yes. There are public databases who shows the city an IP Address if from, and the Internet Service Provider. He might get some more data about you, maybe a photo or some habbits. If he have those the search might not be that hard and he can find you ultimately by associating data from phone books for example. If he knows your name then it will be much easier. However, there are many people who gives their information away on the Internet. Should you be scared of someone finding where you live ? Why would someone want to get to your house instead of emailing or phoning you before ? Journalists can be easily found and they are exposing others on a daily basis. If you really want to write something bad on the Internet about some mob boss you should know this and post anonymously ( there are many tools to hide your tracks on the internet ).

What do you think about this ? Do you have any examples of situations when the city - IP Address association can really harm someone ?

IPGP Geolocation API

July 19th, 2012

3 years ago we launched our IP Address Geolocation API. During this time we provided more than 10 billion results. We have constantly upgraded the service to provide better and more accurate details.

Today, using our API you can programatically get the following details about any IP Address:

  • Country
  • State
  • City
  • Internet Service Provider
  • Organization
  • Latitude
  • Longitude
  • Link to country flag

 

Our API is very easy to use. The information is provided in XML format. The URL for accessing the API is: http://www.ipgp.net/api/xml/IP_ADDRESS/API_KEY .

 

Here is an example of how results are returned:

<IpLookup>
<Ip>123.123.123.123</Ip>
<Code>CN</Code>
<Country>China</Country>
<Flag>http://www.ipgp.net/flags/cn.png</Flag>
<City>Beijing</City>
<Region>Beijing</Region>
<Isp>China Unicom Beijing Province Network</Isp>
<Organization>China Unicom Beijing province network</Organization>
<Lat>39.9289</Lat>
<Lng>116.3883</Lng>
</IpLookup>

If you want to try IP Address Geolocation API, request your API key.

Ipgp API usage

March 25th, 2010

3D render of hard hat and tools

In October last year i've implemented Ipgp Application Programming Interface ( API ). Website owners can use data provided by Ipgp to extract information about IP addresses, or to show the flag to their visitors.

I was reticent about the impact that the API will have and i thought no one will use it, but after the settling time i am surprised of it's usage. Read the rest of this entry »

How can i hide my IP address ?

February 18th, 2010

Despite only 9% of the people who use my ip address lookup tool are trying to find if a proxy works, according to a poll that ran on this website few months ago, i think many people are still interested if they can hide their real Ip address.

A connection between two computers, or between a computer and a web server, which is also a computer, is made trough IP addresses. Like phones, you have to know the number so you can call.

When you type a domain in your web browser, it have first to be translated into an IP address. A DNS server is responsible for this. Read the rest of this entry »

Use Google public DNS to avoid connectivity problems

February 11th, 2010

The DNS ( Domain Name System ) server is responsible to translate domain names, such as website.com to IP's such as 123.123.123.123 in order to establish a connection to that website. In many cases this process takes the most time during a page load. Fortunately, your browser will cache the result and will not ask the DNS server every time, only when trying to access new websites.

In my experience i encountered a lot of problems when using a router when the DNS requests could not be resolved. In some cases the things came back to normal after a period of time, 5-10 minutes, in other cases the only solution was to restart the router. Read the rest of this entry »

What is a DNS server

February 9th, 2010

When you go to a website you type the web address in address bar and a webpage opens. As i said in previous posts about Internet and Ip addresses, computers are using the IP address to connect to another computer. A website is just a place on another computer.

The DNS ( Domain name system ) is responsable to convert web address into IP addresses. So, when you type a domain in your browser, if your eyes are fast enough you can notice that your browser will tell you what is he doing. In the status bar in left-bottom you will notice: "Connecting", "Waiting..", "Resolving Host". Read the rest of this entry »

How to set your network IP address [video]

February 4th, 2010

In recent posts i talked about IP addresses, networks and more. Many people are asking if they can change their IP address. Normally, you cannot change the public IP address, it is true that there are many techniques to hide it, but it is still the same, the only thing you do is to redirect your connections trough another computer. I will discuss about that in another article.

Now i want to talk about changing the IP address that your local network can see, so they can identify you and grant web access.

Read the rest of this entry »

Risks of Using Your Real IP Address

January 24th, 2010

It passed some time since the Internet was considered that bad place where kids are kidnapped. Now the Internet is deeply attached to our lives. Probably not only once you thought at your privacy online and the dangers that are next to every web page. Those are only speculations, actually the Internet is quite a safe place so no one will get his hands out of the monitor and kick you.

The risks of using your real IP address are minimal, unless you make something really wrong. What can someone do with your IP address ? Not much, he can find your city where you live in and that is pretty much everything. Read the rest of this entry »

Why people are trying to find exact location of an ip address

January 21st, 2010

Hello again. This is my first real blog post here, after the introductory post which i can't count. I want to share with you some data built here on Ipgp.net . In the last month i run a poll on my website and i asked my visitors: "Why is the reason you use this tool ?" . Maybe you remember seeing this on homepage or probably you voted for it.

The possible answers for the poll were:

  • For fun, just to see if this tool works
  • I am curious if other people can find my location based on my ip address
  • I just want to find out what IP address do i have
  • I am checking a proxy
  • I am trying to find the location of a hacker or spammer

The results are the following.

Google Chart

Most of Ipgp.net ip lookup tool users are trying to find someone else ip address: a spammer, a hacker, someone that told him bad words, etc. 21% of the users are here just for fun, and other 6% by curiosity, which is almost the same thing. Only 8% of users want to find their IP address while 9% are checking for a proxy. Read the rest of this entry »