Topic: is there any way to tell if a person is actually from my are
blah22's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:02 PM
do you guy's ever check IP addresses ?
the only reason i ask i have been on other sites and the women where actually from Russia or Africa.

Queene123's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:03 PM
how can you even check the ip addy on this site. you can only check when they email you in yahoo or hotmail

Totage's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:05 PM
IPs are worthless. It's so easy to spoof and hide. I'm sure in the stats they can tell you, but only the webmaster/s have that info.

MsTeddyBear2u's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:08 PM
You can check a persons IP address???

I wanna know how to do that...

no photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:12 PM
my ip is diffrent from where i am...its not hard to get it like that..

no photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:14 PM
yes I can find your ip.. but what is the point..... use dos teddy.....

Tarnakk4's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:23 PM
You can if they sent you a letter to a mail service that records them - or if you had admin access to this site and it logs IPs.

But totage's point is well made - and not just because IPs can be spoofed. There are easy ways to reverse and find the actual broadcast IP if - again - you work for the network. You might get lucky and be able to do it without admin access. But IPs no longer corrospond to any real-world locations. Ex: I recently did a job for a major network provisioning addresses. We provisioned all over the country from single /24 ranges (formerly known as "Class C"). There might be a loose collection of IPs, usually /8 ranges (Class A), associated with each nation - but even those aren't sacrosanct.

If this were 1996, I'd say sure and even trace the person for you. Best you can do today is find out what ISP the IP corrosponds to - and then only if they send you a real email.

Incidentally, if you can get an external email from the person, get the extended header, find the sending IP, then go to DNSstuff dot com. Or ARIN (American Registry for Internet Names) and use the whois lookup feature on the IP. It whould look like this for DNSstuff:



AT&T Internet Services SBCIS-SIS80 (NET-64-160-0-0-1)
64.160.0.0 - 64.175.255.255
Waters Moving & Storage SBCIS-101226-125431 (NET-64-172-8-184-1)
64.172.8.184 - 64.172.8.191

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-11-12 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

*Note* You'd still have to contact AT&T's abuse department to find out who that was.

Tarnakk4's photo
Tue 11/13/07 04:27 PM
Actually, I just reread that one. It does give a company name - but no location or contact info. But you get the idea. If you got lucky and it was a company, you're get a company name, but not where they are.

rjzcap1's photo
Tue 11/13/07 08:00 PM
I do network security and am a manger. Trust me IP's can be faked and even blocked.

msclaville's photo
Tue 11/13/07 08:06 PM
I think it doesn't really matter where a person is from, you are only chatting with them. If you really want to get with them after a nice chat, then you should figure out what to do next.

mry's photo
Tue 11/13/07 08:07 PM
Yeah, I'm really from Africa! laugh