What Your IP Address Reveals About You: Location ISP and More

Every device on the internet uses an IP address so data knows where to go. Every website you visit sees yours. It reveals less than many people fear, but more than most people realize.

What an IP address reveals

• Approximate location: usually your country and region, often your city. It's frequently off by miles and almost never gives a street address.
• Your internet provider, or the organization that owns the address, such as a company or university.
• Connection type: home broadband, mobile network, business, data center or VPN.
• Reputation: whether the address appears on spam or abuse lists.

What it doesn't reveal on its own

• Your name or exact home address.
• Your browsing history.
• The contents of your traffic, which HTTPS encrypts.

Your internet provider, however, knows which customer had which address at what time, and can be required to share that through legal processes such as court orders.

How it's combined with other data

Websites and ad networks combine your IP address with cookies, logins and device details. An address that appears every evening alongside the same browser becomes a strong clue about who you are and where you live. See what browsing metadata reveals.

Who can see it

• Every website and service you connect to, and the trackers on those pages.
• Other people in video calls, online games and peer-to-peer apps.
• Your internet provider and the network you're on.

Can someone do harm with it?

Mostly no, but there are risks: targeted denial-of-service attacks against gamers and streamers, rough location being used to find out what area you live in, and scans for weaknesses in your router. Keep your router's software updated and its admin password changed from the default.

How to hide or change it

• VPN: sites see the VPN's address instead of yours. Choose a trustworthy one; see the problem with free VPNs.
• Tor Browser: routes traffic through several volunteers' servers.
• iCloud Private Relay: for Safari users with iCloud+.
• Mobile data: your address changes and is shared with many other users.

Plug the WebRTC leak

Even with a VPN, WebRTC, a browser feature used for video calls, can reveal your real IP to websites. WebRTC Privacy Shield sets Chrome's WebRTC policy to stop that. Test it with a WebRTC leak test. See also what your ISP can see.