Does IP Address Reveal my Physical Location?

why ISP keeps the record of the IP address for a sent email? if it is a legal obligation then how long?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm sure each ISP has a different policy on data retention...

If someone has your IP, and tells you where your internet provider is located online (what city)... should you be worried...? It was kind of creepy, Bob.

EDITOR'S NOTE: No, the mapping of IP to geographic area (of the ISP) is public data. There are websites where you can see this in action. See http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

if someone sent a nasty email to someone else, and they said they would press charges against the someone sending the email.will the police be able to track the email sender through the ip address...especially if the email sender lives in another state of the one he sent the email to?

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's possible (in most cases) from a technical standpoint. But you'd need to convince a judge that your squabble is a criminal affair, and get him to order the sending ISP to reveal the sender's info. Even then, if the email was sent from a public terminal in a library or school, it becomes impossible to identify who sent the message.

In response to my last question -- So, in them being able to say the physical location of my ISP, and where they are headquartered, from getting my IP from a forum, I should be okay, then? It's really weird that they can find that kind of thing out.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Internet was designed this way. The ability to correlate an IP address to a geographic location is a good thing.

Yes, your kids can be tracked down, but only if your kids know your home ip address and willingly give it out. To find out what your home ip address is, simply go to your start menu, click on Run..., then type in "cmd". The command prompt will come up, type in "ipconfig" without the quotation marks...and after about 1-5 seconds it will display a list of your connection-specific dns suffix, your home ip address, your subnet mask, and your default gateway ip address. If you're wondering I am 17, and I have no idea how I learned all this stuff, I just know it...

If you want you can of course keep changing your MAC address (physical address) every few days. For more info follow this guide http://www.nthelp.com/NT6/change_mac_w2k.htm

Hi, is there a way from the ip, to find someones user name that uses to connect to the internet through dial-up,adsl?

EDITOR'S NOTE: No you can't obtain a username from the IP address. Only the ISP could tell you that.

Hello, what about some ip scanner tools that claims to resolve-discover from an ip, the host name , mac address , computer name , user name , TTL , country , alive host or not ...etc... Does this user name that these tools discovers is the user name that someones uses to connect to internet with a dial-up or adsl line?.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Definitely not. Many years ago, some ISPs were putting the username in the dynamic hostname assigned to the IP address for a dialup session. But I'd be schocked if any are still doing that.

Good day sir bob, well in greece the ISP and generally the internet technology is about 10-20 years old in comparison with yours in usa, so dont be schocked that many greek ISP still doing it.

So its very easy for a bad hacker to find someones user name from an ip if he/she do a scan of the ip or even attack the ISP databases and so he/she can combine the ip with the specific user name and send out viruses or threatening emails to this user.

a while ago i asked a question regarding drugs online. one guy answered by saying that he tracked my ip and is going to report me to local authorities. that would be very unfortunate, considering i've been in some trouble with drugs before. what can i do to avoid all of this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Most likely he's lying, unless he happens to know you personally. Nobody (except your ISP) can find out your personal identify given only your IP address. Visit http://www.geoiptool.com for some fun.