Most articles about IP addresses fall into one of two camps: scary ("they can find your house!") or dismissive ("it's just a number"). The reality is somewhere in between, and worth understanding accurately if you care about privacy or you build for users who do.
What every website sees automatically
The moment your browser opens a connection, the remote server logs your IP. From that single value, public databases provide:
- Your ISP or hosting provider — the network that announces the IP block via BGP.
- The ASN — the unique identifier for that network on the global routing table.
- Approximate geolocation — usually accurate to country (95%+) and often to city, though increasingly imprecise for mobile and VPN traffic.
- The reverse DNS hostname, if the ISP publishes one. Often hints at connection type (cable, fiber, mobile) or service.
None of this requires consent or a tracker. It's inherent to how IP networks work.
What an IP doesn't reveal
- Your identity. The IP belongs to your ISP, not you. Tying an IP to a person requires the ISP's records and usually a legal request.
- Your street address. Geolocation maps to the registrant's address — usually the ISP's regional point of presence. It can be off by hundreds of kilometers, especially for mobile carriers.
- Your name, account, or device. An IP can be shared by an entire household, a corporate office, or thousands of mobile subscribers behind CGNAT.
- Your activity history. The IP itself doesn't carry browsing history; that lives in cookies, fingerprints, and account-linked data.
IPv4 vs IPv6: a real difference for privacy
IPv4 addresses are scarce, so most residential ISPs share one public address among many subscribers via CGNAT (carrier-grade NAT). Your "public IP" might be the same as 1,000 other customers'. IPv6 fixes the scarcity, so each device often gets its own globally unique address — better for routing, but easier to track. Modern operating systems mitigate this with privacy extensions (RFC 8981) that rotate the host portion of the IPv6 address regularly.
VPNs, Tor, and proxies
A VPN replaces your visible IP with the VPN server's IP. Sites see the VPN, not you. What is My IP with VPN on confirms which exit node you're using and which country it's registered in. Important caveats:
- The VPN provider sees everything you didn't encrypt elsewhere. Trust matters more than tech.
- VPN exit nodes get blocked aggressively by streaming services, banking apps, and CAPTCHAs.
- DNS leaks happen when your DNS queries bypass the VPN. Test with a tool that shows which DNS resolver you're using.
Tor adds three encrypted hops between you and the destination, with a different exit node per circuit. It's slower and more conspicuous (many sites flag known Tor exits), but provides much stronger unlinkability than a single VPN.
What you can do practically
- If you don't want a remote service to see your real IP, use a VPN you trust or Tor for more sensitive needs.
- If you run a service and care about your users' privacy, don't log IPs longer than you need to and never share them with third parties without a clear reason.
- If you're investigating a suspicious IP from your own logs, use IP Lookup to find the network and abuse contact — that's the right channel, not a personal investigation.
- If you're trying to verify whether your VPN is working, What is My IP shows the IP that the public internet currently sees from your connection.
One more thing: the LAN address
The address starting with 10.x, 172.16-31.x, or 192.168.x that your computer reports inside Settings is your LAN address. It's chosen by your router and is meaningful only on your local network. Websites never see it; sharing it doesn't give anyone access to anything.