IP Address?

Who has access to my IP address apart from ISP. Can other people get access to my home address through my IP address and if so how can I stop this from happening? Cheers guys for the answers so far. I use an ASDL external router. And I have Nortons Firewall which seems to catch everything thrown at it. I've heard of a programme called Zone Alarm is it any good and can I use in conjunction with my current firewall or is it not necessary?

Public Comments

1. well are you connected direct to the internet or via a router if the latter then no if the first i would suggest getting yourself a good firewall if you need help mesage me
2. Any other computer that you connect with on the internet sees your IP address. This is necessary in order for the other computer to communicate with you. For example, when ever you visit a web site, the web server that is hosting that web site sees your IP address.
3. no one can get your home address from your IP address (not even the FBI) without going through your ISP and asking them where you live. As far as people finding out what your IP address is that can be done very easily and there is nothing you can do to stop it unless you link up to a proxy in which case the proxy acts as the middle man between you and the website (or what ever you want to access) but it slows everything down significantly and is not worth it.
4. anyone can ping you if your router allows it. your router will have an option that allows you to 'discard WAN pings'. A decent firewall (like zonealarm) can allow you to hide your IP address, or just the last octet.
5. Having your IP address with software that I have in my PC, I would only be able to trace you to your ISP, and the city, state or country that you reside in. Any other further information, would require a court order with cause for a judge to issue a warrant for your ISP to provide all data on you in their server to the investigative agency requesting the data. Then they would have your home address, plus every thing that you ever used your PC for on the world wide web. Install Zone Alarm free for home personal use. http://www.zonealarm.com I use this software for ten plus years and just this year alone over 12875 rouge packets have been blocked. 385 other other rouge packets were rated "critical" and blocked. Mind Doctor, France
6. a router firewall can be brocher with the right emn progrem a personal fierwall like (seagate ) is harder but a good hacker can get though (an its hard for u to git out) so keep your persenal persenal data off your computer like ssn.s bank acc. cc.#s things like that only give this info to locked sites an turn remember password off ,if someone wants in your database they.ll get there..
7. Zone Alarm is just another software firewall and you should use only one software firewall. This is what a Microsoft MVP has to say about the subject. You may also want to consider reading her entire web-page on "How to prevent Malware". It is one of the best that I have seen. http://users.telenet.be/bluepatchy/miekiemoes/prevention.html "Never install more than one Antivirus and Firewall! Rather than giving you extra protection, it will decrease the reliability of it seriously! The reason for this is that if both products have their automatic (Real-Time) protection switched on, your system may lock up due to both software products attempting to access the same file at the same time. Also because more than one Antivirus and Firewall installed are not compatible with eachother, it can cause system performance problems and a serious system slowdown." Good luck.
8. Most ADSL IP addresses are given out dynamically by a server, and as such are usually targetted at geographical regions - for example, my ISP gives out an address which can be tracked to somewhere in southwest england due to the way the addresses are assigned to the ISP (this is how many sites can target their adverts geographically, such as those which try and get you to sign up to dating sites by listing eligble people in, what the site thinks is, your local area). However, this is as far as a normal user can go. Your IP address can be used to get back to your router itself, but so long as you have a firewall enabled with no port forwarding except that which is absolutely necessary, they will not be able to find out anything more about you. In the UK, access to IP address logs is done via the RIP Act, which forces all ISPs to keep logs of who had what IP at all times. Only the police forces over here can access that information if they have a warrant.
9. As with the other answers with the addition forget Zonealarm