Every time you open a website, your device tells that site where to send the reply. That return address is your public IP address. It is visible to every site and service you use, it appears in server logs, and it is the reason a streaming service knows which country's catalogue to show you. It is also surrounded by myths: that it reveals your home address, that it never changes, or that it says nothing at all.
This guide explains what an IP address really is, what others can and cannot learn from it, and how home Wi-Fi, mobile data and VPNs change what you see. You can follow along with the Find My IP Address tool open in another tab.
Public and private IP addresses
There are two kinds of address in play on a typical home network.
Private addresses are used inside your home or office network: your phone might be 192.168.1.23 and your laptop 192.168.1.24. These ranges (such as 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16–31.x.x) are reused in millions of homes and are never seen on the internet.
Your public address belongs to your router's connection to your internet provider. Every device at home shares it when talking to the outside world; the router keeps track of which reply belongs to which device. This shared public address is what websites see, and what Find My IP shows.
On mobile data the picture is often different. Many mobile networks put large numbers of customers behind a shared public address, a technique called carrier-grade NAT. That is one reason your "location" on mobile can be a city hundreds of kilometres away.
IPv4 and IPv6: why you might have two addresses
IPv4 addresses look like 203.0.113.42: four numbers from 0 to 255. There are only about 4.3 billion of them, far fewer than the devices online, which is why sharing addresses is so common.
IPv6 addresses look like 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334. There are so many that every device can, in principle, have its own public address. Many Indian mobile and broadband providers already offer IPv6, and websites that support it will prefer it.
Find My IP Address checks both. If you see an IPv6 address, your connection supports it; if not, everything still works over IPv4. Seeing a different IPv4 and IPv6 location is normal, because the two are registered separately.
What websites can learn from your IP address
From the IP address alone, a website or the services behind it can usually tell:
- Your internet provider, such as a broadband company, a mobile operator or a VPN service.
- The network it belongs to, identified by an ASN (Autonomous System Number), which is how networks are listed in internet routing.
- An approximate location, usually a country and a nearby city or region.
- The time zone, derived from that location.
- Whether it is likely a VPN, data centre or mobile network, which some services use to detect fraud or enforce regional rules.
That is roughly what the Find My IP tool shows you: it asks public IP services the same questions a website's software would.
What your IP address does not reveal
An IP address does not contain your name, your phone number, your email or your street address. The link between an IP address at a particular moment and a customer account is held by your internet provider, which in most countries shares it only under a legal process, for example in a police investigation.
So, for an ordinary website, your IP address is closer to "a customer of this provider, somewhere around this city" than to "this person at this house". It still matters, though: combined with cookies, logins and browser fingerprints, it helps companies recognise you across visits. The What Is My Browser tool shows the other details your browser shares with every site.
Why your IP location is often wrong
People are often surprised to see a different city, or even a different state, in IP lookups. That is expected. IP location databases are built from registration records and network measurements, and they usually point to:
- Where your provider registers the address block, often a regional hub city.
- Where the mobile network's gateway is, which can be far from you.
- An outdated record, because address blocks are reassigned over time.
Accuracy at country level is generally high; at city level it varies widely, and at street level IP location is not meaningful. If a website shows prices in the wrong city or asks you to confirm your location, this is why. For finding an exact place, coordinates are far more reliable; see how to find the GPS coordinates of any place.
Does your IP address change?
Usually, yes. Most home broadband and almost all mobile connections use dynamic addresses: your provider assigns one from a pool, and it can change when your router restarts, when the lease expires, or when you move between mobile towers. Businesses can pay for a static address that stays the same, which is useful for hosting servers or for being added to a company's allow-list.
You can see this for yourself: check your IP on Wi-Fi, switch your phone to mobile data, and check again. The provider, network and location will all change.
VPNs, proxies and Tor
A VPN sends your traffic through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites then see the VPN server's IP address and location instead of yours. To confirm a VPN is working, open Find My IP Address with it off, note the address and provider, then turn it on and press Check again. The provider should change to the VPN company and the location to the server you chose.
Two caveats are worth knowing. First, the VPN provider now sees your traffic's destination instead of your internet provider, so choose one you trust. Second, if your IPv6 address still shows your home provider while IPv4 shows the VPN, your VPN is not covering IPv6, and some sites may still see your real network.
When you actually need your IP address
- Allow-lists. Cloud databases, admin panels and office systems often only accept connections from approved addresses.
- Support tickets. Your provider or IT team may ask for your public IP to trace a connection problem.
- Troubleshooting. Checking whether you are on IPv6, or which network you are using, helps explain slow or blocked sites. To test speed and latency to servers around the world, use the Ping Tool; our guide on measuring network ping and server latency explains the numbers.
- Looking up a website's server. The reverse question, which IP a domain points to, is answered by a DNS Lookup.
Frequently asked questions
Can someone hack me if they know my IP address?
Knowing your public IP lets someone send traffic to your router, which happens constantly on the internet anyway. A router with up-to-date firmware and no open ports is not at risk just because its address is known.
Can a website find my exact address from my IP?
No. It can estimate a city or region. Only your provider links the IP to your account.
Why does my IP show a different state?
IP location usually reflects your provider's registration or gateway, not your home.
Does Find My IP store my address?
No. The lookups go from your browser directly to public IP services, and nothing is kept by us.
Your IP address is an everyday, shared, frequently changing label that says more about your provider than about you. Check it on Wi-Fi and mobile data, check it with and without a VPN, and the picture becomes clear. Start with Find My IP Address and see what websites see.
