How to Track the Owner of an IP Address

Every IP Address has an owner who could be an individual or an organization. A lot of websites do not hide this information meaning that their IP address is public. You can easily look them up and know who owns it. But some IP address owners want to remain anonymous and go to the extent of hiring services to keep them hidden when they go online.

Because of this, it is hard to get their name and contact information. So what do you do when you need to find the person behind an anonymous IP address?

Searching by IP address

If you have the IP address, you can use ARIN WHOIS. This service searches the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) using the IP address that you have. As a result, you get to have the owner of the IP address, a contact number, and even get a list of the IP address that is owned by the same owner. ARIN WHOIS also gives you access to when these IP addresses were registered.

To get a feel of how simple the whole process is, go check out the ARIN WHOIS website. Enter the IP address 216.58.194.78 and wait for the results. ARIN WHOIS will show you that Google owns this IP address along with several other details.

What if you don't have the IP address?

There are services like Register.com, GoDaddy, UltraTools, and DomainTools that can find the IP address owner even when you do not have an IP address.

But if you still want to use ARIN WHOIS, all you have to do is use a ping command to convert the website to its IP address in the command prompt of Windows. All you have to do is type "ping" space then the website name on the command prompt. The IP address will show after the next line in square brackets.

Searching for private and reserved IP addresses

There are IP addresses that are being reserved for private network uses or private internet research. These types of addresses are used on business networks and private homes. If you want to know who owns a Private or Reserved IP address, the best thing you can do is to go through their respective network system administrator.

Why do people track IP address owners?

There are a lot of reasons to justify tracking down the owner of an IP address:

• Fraud investigators and law enforcement officers can use it to track down cybercriminals from scammers to spammers.
• Some databases use it to find violators and spammers so that they can block them.
• Online merchants look up the owners of the IP addresses to make sure that buyers who charge huge amounts of cash are at the same address that matches their credit card details.