How do I figure out who owns an IP address?

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hmmm on what occasions are they willing to give it? and there is NO other way you or a hacker or internet company can manage to get you the address and zipcode of that person?

I'm no lawyer, but my belief is that it requires legal action ... something like a court order ... for the ISPs to divulge that information. I know of no way a hacker could get that info, short of hacking the ISP's own databases.

I run a community forum and we are being hassled by some very nasty people, i have their IPs but how do i find out who the service provider is so i can report these people for abuse.

The ARIN link in the article you just commented on would be where I'd start.

I must find out the IP address of the person who has the xanga http://www.xanga.com/aboriginal_prankster

I need to know ASAP Thanks

is this the same person?
IP 64.12.138.204

&

IP 64.12.137.3

There's no way to know.

Help me! So if I have an IP address, there is still now way to find out who owns that? I can trace an email and it gives me servers, but who is that server? I need to find out who is sending me these emails!
Rebecca

The whois search in the article will tell you who owns the server. The last server will be owned by the sender's ISP, and you'll have to contact that ISP for any more information. In my experience, ISPs do NOT respond to these requests unless you have a court order.

Ok, sorry, I have to throw in my two cents here. The "there's no way to know" is just a stupid answer. You can use any rwhois service to find the ISP who owns this address. Finding out which specific customer of theirs that is using the address is a different matter. However, if a law is being broken then you can go to a law enforcement agency. This gets tricky because of the laws in various countries, what treaties they subscribe to, and to what degree the law enforcement agencies in the various countries involved are willing to cooperate. Most cyber-crime is committed using an ISP that is not in the same country as either the victim or the offender.

This will still usually not yield the identity to you (again, depending upon the country's laws), but the law enforcement will be able to obtain that identity from the ISP in almost all cases (this is certainly the case in the US). If the offender resides in a different country than the hosting IP, then it gets even more complicated.

However, if a cessation of the activity is all you desire, this is often simplified with correspondence with that ISP. Some ISPs do not want their reputations damaged and their entire IP range banned! This is especially true if you are part of a larger media organization and such an action on your behalf would decrease the value of their service and to their legitimate subscribers! In such cases, the ISP simply cancels the offending subscribers account and they are forced to find some other way to harass you.

Now, if their client turns out to be, an educational institution or a business, the offender can be expelled or fired for abuse of IT utilization usage policies (this is nice revenge if you are lucky enough).

All in all, it can be a tedious process (I’ve done it before, in both criminal and non-criminal cases) and it can be very time consuming, can run up a phone bill (make sure you have a good international calling plan) and often results in a dead end. But results can be achieved! It depends upon how pissed this person has got you and how much time you want to spend on it.

Daniel

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