Summary: We'll look at some of the specific information that you're making available to every website you visit, and briefly explain each.
What's my IP address?
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As you probably already know your IP address is the "address" or logical (not physical) location of your computer or router connected to the internet.
There are plenty of sites that will tell you your IP address. In fact, any web site you visit can see it.
I'll do the same, but also try to explain, a little, exactly what it is you're seeing.
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Your IP Address is:
38.107.191.107 |
This is the IP address of the device you have connected to the internet. That means that if you have a single computer it's likely to be the IP address of the computer itself. On the other hand, if you are behind a router, the IP address shown here is the internet-facing IP address of that router.
"Reverse DNS" on that IP address returns 38.107.191.107. If that's still just the IP address, there's nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, if that's an actual foo.bar.something.com kind of domain name, that information more often than not quickly and easily identifies your ISP.
Speaking of which, you often get even more information about the ISP that owns that IP address by visiting the ARIN whois database. ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is the primary arbiter for the assignment of IP addresses and IP address ranges.
There are also various geo-locating services that will attempt to tell you where your IP address resides physically. I'm not going to link to any of them because they are notoriously inaccurate. Frequently, the only thing they get right is the country - even though they may claim much higher accuracy. (Mine, for example, typically is about 300 miles off.)
The User Agent is a relatively complex bit of information that identifies the browser that you are using as well as additional information related to your operating system and language. There are quite literally thousands of different browsers and spiders and other utilities for fetching web pages, and thus there are quite literally thousands of different possibilities for a User Agent string. It's also possible to configure some browsers or tools to lie - for example, it's possible to force FireFox to report a user agent string of Internet Explorer, to fake out websites that check for and only work with IE.
The referrer string is a little known but very interesting bit of information that's provided to web sites by most browsers. In short, if you click on a link to get to this page, the 'referrer' is the link back to the page you were on that had that link.
Depending on how you got to this page, it may or may not be set.
If you found this page via a search engine, things get even more interesting. Typically the URL of the page you were on in the search engine - the search results page that contained a link to this page - includes the search terms you were looking for that generated those results. That means that websites can know not only that you came from a search engine results page, but they're also typically also able to tell specifically what you were searching for.
There are other more obscure bits of information being passed around as well, but these are the big three; the ones that all websites get and that they might use in various ways.
Related:
What can a website I visit tell about me? Websites can collect a fair amount of information about you. In this first step we look at what every website sees no mater what it does.
How did you get my IP address? Your IP address is the fundamental way of identifying your computer on the internet. Your IP address is available to any service you connect to.
What can people tell from my IP address? People can tell very little from your IP address. They cannot, for example, tell who or where you are. How much they can tell varies a great deal.
Article C3537 - October 19, 2008
so that's the reason why other web sites can send some viruses. .
em i right??
Posted by: dhoyskie at October 23, 2008 2:29 AMYour "User Agent" string is:
Googlebot 2.1
Your "Referrer" string is:
http://ask-leo.com/
Priceless...
Posted by: DanielMD at November 5, 2008 12:08 PMLeo I still have a problem with one of my computers #1 computer works find on my network but #2 computer will not connect my network.
Both computers have been working on my network until
the server was taking over by another.
It might mean the new server wants another fee
I have always been using 5 port nway switch hub
Someone suggested I get a router to make my network work.
I am the only one using both computers and all I want is simple network.
12-Nov-2008
RUN > IPCONFIG produces a milli-second flash of the "blackboard" text screen with the IP info, but disappears way too quickly to read. How to make the screen remain? (XP w/sp3)
12-Nov-2008
@ Bill Kingman. U'll Have to go to command prompt (Start-Accessories-Command prompt) and then type ipconfig to know your IP address
Posted by: Anand at November 11, 2008 7:33 PMRe Bill Kingman... This worked for me:
Start | Run |(type) CMD |(type) IPCONFIG
I also have XP3.
Posted by: Jan Texter at November 12, 2008 9:42 AMJan
thank you for your response. my next question is how do i found out what is the dns sever preferred and alternate ip address is. i am trying to open ports on my computer.
Posted by: angel morales at November 13, 2008 6:03 PMi'm trying to sign into msn messenger and it keeps saying my ip is not letting me sign in, what should i do?
Posted by: buddymikey at December 27, 2008 8:19 PMYah, hey bro I am using Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and I have Firefox but I can't seem to figure out how to change the user agent, please help me out!!!
14-Mar-2009
hi,
Posted by: prasanna at May 30, 2009 3:46 AMtry wikipedia for in-depth knowledge. but for starters ip address is analogical to ur physical door address, in this case representing ur computer. ip addresses are the building blocks of internet communication, u can also locate or at least close in on the exact location of the computer if u have the ip address try http://www.ip-details.com/