Guides

Everything we've written about IP addresses, in one place: honest, technical, and anchored to the live tool so you can verify each claim on your own connection as you read.

Understand your IP

• What is my IP address? — the starting point: what the number is, who assigns it, and what it carries.
• Public vs private IP addresses — why your laptop says 192.168.x.x while the internet sees something else.
• How accurate is IP geolocation? — country ~99.8%, city far less; why the map is often a town over.
• Why is my IP location wrong? — the five causes, in troubleshooting order, and which are fixable.
• Static vs dynamic IP addresses — which you have, why it changes, and the cheaper alternatives to static.
• IPv4 vs IPv6 — what actually differs, and which one you're using right now.
• What is CGNAT? — when your "public" IP is shared with thousands of neighbors.
• What is an ASN, and how to find yours — the network-level identity behind every address.
• What is reverse DNS? — PTR records, why yours looks auto-generated, and where rDNS matters.
• What is NAT? — how your whole network shares one IP, and why inbound connections fail.
• What is DHCP? — the lease system handing every device its address.
• What is localhost? — 127.0.0.1, loopback, and why your phone can't see your dev server.
• What is my router's IP? — finding your gateway, and the WAN-address diagnostic.
• What is a user agent? — the other thing every request reveals.

Privacy & exposure

• What can someone do with your IP address? — the honest split between real risks and scare stories.
• How do people get your IP address? — logging links, P2P swarms, and the channels that stopped working a decade ago.
• Does incognito mode hide your IP? — no, and the ten-second proof.
• What does your ISP actually see? — every domain, even on HTTPS; none of the content.
• Find your ISP from your IP — reading the asn_org field that names your network.
• Can websites track you by IP? — where the IP thread ranks against cookies, logins and fingerprints.
• Can police trace an IP? — how traces really work: legal process, not movie hacking.
• How to hide your IP — every method compared, with a verification step for each.
• How to change your IP address — getting a fresh lease, from airplane mode to MAC clone.

VPN & leaks

• Check if your VPN is leaking your real IP — the two-command test, on IPv4 and IPv6.
• What is a DNS leak? — your lookups escaping the tunnel, and how to catch them.
• What is a WebRTC leak? — the browser channel that bypasses proxies, and what's still true in 2026.
• How to test your VPN kill switch — force the tunnel down and watch what leaks, instead of trusting a checkbox.
• Does a VPN hide everything? — the honest inventory: what the tunnel covers and what it never did.
• Tor vs VPN — anonymity vs privacy, and which problem is actually yours.
• What is a proxy? — per-app relays, how they differ from VPNs, and the free-proxy warning.

Command line & code

• Find your public IP from the terminal — curl ipconfig.io and every variation.
• Get your public IP in code — Python, Go, JavaScript, and friends.
• Get your public IP in PowerShell — irm one-liners and a change monitor for Windows.
• Look up IP geolocation with curl — per-field endpoints for scripts.
• Check if a port is open on your IP — a real from-the-internet reachability test.
• Monitor your public IP for changes — cron, notifications, and why addresses drift.
• Get the public IP of a GitHub Actions runner — the one-step diagnostic, and better patterns than allowlisting Azure.
• Get a Docker container's public IP — why 172.17.x isn't it, and when inside differs from outside.
• DNS lookups with dig and nslookup — the working cheatsheet, plus the two debugging moves that matter.
• Is your IP on a spam blacklist? — checking DNSBLs yourself, and delisting honestly.