Fortunately, many locations are passing laws that address these situations more directly and allow law enforcement to trace offenders. As long as the activity is technically “legal”, there’s little that can be done to trace the offender.
This puts those victims of cyberbullying and other forms of online harassment at a disadvantage. If there’s nothing to suggest a crime has been committed, then in theory even law enforcement cannot get the information. Typically 2, that means that law enforcement professionals go to a judge and provide evidence of reasonable cause that a crime has been committed, at which point the judge issues an order compelling the ISP to release the information. Police and the courts can, with appropriate cause, request or even demand the location connected to an IP address. That’s why you may be able to identify the ISP involved and nothing more.įor more, you need help.
Most ISPs adhere to a strict privacy policy that prevents them from disclosing that information. The ISP that “owns” the IP address assigned to your computer also knows where you live that’s where they send your bill or hook up the wires. Some additional information might be available to indicate the area where the IP address resides, but that is rarely more specific than what country, or perhaps what city, it’s in. Public information about an IP address tells you which ISP provides it, and not much else.
Television and movie dramas lead us to believe that given an IP address, a criminal can be located in minutes. While technically inaccurate, the best way to think of it is that IP addresses are assigned at the whim of the ISP providing the internet connection. Even if you do use the same ISP, there are no rules or practices that would make your IP addresses appear “close” to one another. For example, the IP address assigned to your computer at home will be radically different than the one assigned to your neighbor next door if you use different ISPs.
IP addresses are based on your internet service provider, not on where you are. Much like your mailing address identifies the physical location of your mailbox and tells your mail carrier where to deliver your mail, a device’s IP address tells the internet where to send the data destined for your computer.īut while an IP address is like a physical address, it’s important to realize that it isn’t one. They are used to route data between devices. It’s certainly not easy, and depending on who you are, it may not even be possible.Īn IP (or “Internet Protocol”) address is the unique number assigned to every device connected to a network. There’s a common misconception that it’s easy to trace an IP address to the computer to which it’s assigned, and be able to identify the computer’s location.