Why You Need To Know Your IP Address

The most common reasons are to assist in technical support, to ensure you are not blocked from a certain site, and to ensure you aren't blocked from a certain country.

There is usually only one area of technical support that will need to know your IP address and that is from webmasters or websites. They may ask to confirm your IP, or to ensure you are not blocked. They will never ask through a web form, because this information can be automatically retrieved.

If you have subscribed to a technical support service, it is common for the technician to remotely connect to your PC (with your permission) to help diagnose and fix the problem. In these instances be wary of any support service that requests to know your IP address. Most remote connect support services these days find ways to bypass this issue, and any who don't are generally unprofessional.

Lastly, your Internet Provider will never ask for your IP address. They assign it to you and they will know what they have assigned, so do not trust any technician that asks for your IP address. Therefore we can conclude that technical support is a legitimate but rare reason for needing to know your IP address.

The most important reason to know your IP is to ensure your security. Many times if you try to retrieve a forgotten password, or make an online purchase, the website will send you an email with your IP address, advising you that such action has been taken. It is your responsibility to ensure that the IP they have given you matches your actual IP address. If it does not, then it is evident that someone from another computer is making online purchases on your behalf, or trying to find out your password. With that knowledge you can then secure your accounts, or change your password.

Finally, the most common reason to know your IP address is to ensure that you aren't blocked from a certain website. Many times Internet Relay Chat rooms will block users that have been rude or obnoxious by their IP address. Online forums or bulletin boards do the same, to ensure that a user doesn't simply re-register with another username and continue the verbal abuse.

Some sites will also block an IP address because they have detected attempted hacks, or "flooding" (trying to overload their server). You will see this if a website always times out instead of loading, but from another person's computer it works fine. Usually this is because the person who had that IP address last was trying to hack the website in question. In this instance you can email the site's webmaster and request for the IP address to be unblocked.

Now that we have established why knowing how to find out your IP address is so important, you can learn how to know what your IP address at any given time.