While your IP address won’t give away sensitive information like your phone number and address, it can still be used against you and have devastating consequences:
⭕️Someone can get your location and intrude on your privacy in real life
Your IP address shows what city you’re in, so if someone ill-intentioned finds it out, you could be in trouble. Let’s say you’ve announced that you’re going on holiday on your social media. A criminal only needs to do a little extra digging to find your house and burgle it while you’re away.
⭕️Someone can use your IP to hack your device
The internet uses ports as well as your IP address to connect. There are thousands of ports for every IP address, and a hacker who has your IP can try all of those ports to brute-force a connection, taking over your phone for example and stealing your information.
If a criminal does get access to your device, they could also install malware on it, which could expose your IP.
⭕️Someone can impersonate you to get hold of your IP address
Your ISP could reveal your IP address to someone else. Criminals who know your name on social media can contact your ISP and try to impersonate you or use a vishing attack to steal your personal details. Remember that telecom operators are only humans who use systems with vast amounts of personally identifiable information.
⭕️Employers can track your activity
IPs are owned by ISPs, and each IP is assigned to a user. When you’re connected to your work network your employers could potentially see and track everything you do online – giving you hardly any privacy at all.
⭕️A hacker can hit you with a DDoS attack
If a hacker has your IP address, they could harm you with a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. A DDoS attack uses an army of computers controlled by a hacker to flood your device with traffic so it disconnects from the internet and completely shuts down.
⭕️Cybercriminals can frame you for illegal activity
Hackers are known to use hacked IP addresses to download illegal content that threatens national security as well as anything else they don’t want traced back to them. Protect your IP address, and you will protect yourself.
