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In most cases, that’s where the tracking stops. And your internet service provider (ISP) also has a record of that visit. That website and the server it’s on now know your IP address has visited.
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Then the server that hosts the website you’re seeking accepts the packet, learns what network is asking for access, and knows where to send back its response in the form of all the files that make up the website.
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That hand shake is how IP addresses are tracked.įor example, when you’re trying to visit a website, your network sends out an information packet that includes your IP address and port number. In internet parlance, this is generally described as “shaking hands.” Your IP address needs to let the device at the other IP address know where to send the information that’s being requested. What exactly do we mean when we say that other devices and networks can see you (or at least your IP)? How Are IP Addresses Tracked?Įvery time two devices connect to one another using the internet protocol, they have to acknowledge each other. And that last part is what makes some people uncomfortable. Anytime you send an email or visit a website, that’s how the machines your network communicates with will see you. If you used HostGator’s tool to learn what yours is, you probably saw an IP address that fits this description and looked something like: 95.132.204.8. In most cases, IP addresses are a string of numbers separated by periods. For different machines and networks to effectively communicate with each other via the internet protocol, they need a way to identify one another.
#Is it legal to track ip address how to#
That, in a nutshell, is how IP addresses work.ĭevices that use the internet are all programmed to follow the internet protocol so they know how to interact with each other and keep the internet functioning the way we need it to. If you’ve ever wondered how one machine knows how to connect to another and what information to share with it, all internet-connected devices use the internet protocol for that. IP stands for internet protocol, which is the set of processes that dictate how information is shared across the web.
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To start, you need to know what an IP address is.
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