What your IP address reveals — and what it doesn’t
Your public IP identifies your connection to the internet, not you. From it, any website can read roughly what you see above: your provider, the network’s name and number (ASN), and an approximate location — usually the right city or region, sometimes only the right country.
It does not reveal your street address, your name, or your device. Geolocation databases map addresses to the place your provider registered them, which is why the city can be off — mobile networks and VPNs are regularly “wrong” by hundreds of kilometers. Treat IP location as a hint, never as a fact.
IPv4 vs IPv6 — why you may have two addresses
IPv4 (like 203.0.113.7) is the classic format — and the internet ran out of them years ago. IPv6 (like 2001:db8::1) is its successor with an effectively unlimited supply. Most modern connections are dual stack: they hold one of each and use whichever a website supports.
If you see only IPv4, your ISP hasn’t rolled out IPv6 — everything still works. If you see only IPv6, your IPv4 traffic likely shares a translated address with other customers (CGNAT), which is normal on mobile networks.
Public vs private addresses
The addresses on this page are your public ones — what the wider internet sees. Inside your home, your router hands each device a private address (usually 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x) and translates between the two. Dozens of devices share one public IPv4 address; that’s NAT, and it’s why “my IP” looks identical on every device in the house.
How to change or hide your IP
Restarting your router sometimes gets you a new address from your ISP’s pool (many ISPs rotate them anyway; others bind one to your line for months). Your provider’s support can tell you which policy applies to you.
To hide your IP from the sites you visit, you need a middleman: a VPN, a proxy, or a network like Tor. Sites then see the middleman’s address instead of yours. If that’s your goal, run our IP & DNS leak test afterwards — a VPN that leaks WebRTC or DNS traffic hides less than it promises.
Common questions
Is my exact location exposed by my IP?
No. IP geolocation resolves to the area where your provider registered the address block — often the right city, sometimes just the right region or country. Your street address is only known to your ISP, which requires legal process to disclose it.
Why does my IP address change?
Most home connections lease a dynamic address that can rotate when your router reconnects or after a timeout. Some ISPs keep the same address for months, others rotate daily. A fixed (static) IP is usually a paid business option.
Why do different sites show me different locations?
They query different geolocation databases, and databases disagree — especially for mobile carriers and recently re-assigned blocks. All of them are guessing from registration data; none of them measures where you physically are.
Is it dangerous that my IP is visible?
Every site you visit necessarily sees it — that’s how the internet routes answers back to you. The practical risks are approximate profiling and, rarely, targeted attacks on poorly secured home routers. Keeping your router updated matters more than hiding your IP.
What is an ASN?
An Autonomous System Number identifies a network on the internet — your ISP, a cloud provider, a university. The ASN shown above is the network currently announcing your address, which is how tools can tell a home connection from a datacenter.