funinthesun

I have been told that if a person has a mobile dongle internet connection it is impossible to trace their i.p. address and that each time they log on to the internet the i.p. address changes and they never get the same i.p. twice. Is this true. What do the numbers in the i.p. address mean.

EMR

All I can say is that when on holiday I used my local mobile dongle to check my Uk lottery as I had an email informing me of a win ( £10 whoo hoo ) .
I got a reply from the National lottery informing me that as I was not in the UK they would not respond.
So their system knew where i was !!

Fred James

That is because however many times you change your IP address it will know that it is a Spanish IP address.

All IP addresses are ultimately traceable however often you change them. Most routers are not fixed IP addresses - that is possible but usually costs more.

You retain the same address until you turn off the router/dongle and when you reconnect it assigns a new address.

Fredbargate

To use a dongle you need a phone sim.

To purchase a sim in Spain you will need to give your details.

funinthesun

So each time you disconnect from the internet then log on again the i.p. address with a mobile dongle is always different. Someone told me this was also better for security reasons when surfing the net.

pete_l

Almost all ISPs have a pool of IP addresses. When one of their customers connects to the internet, an address is assigned from the range of numbers allocated to the ISP. This is true for landline connections and also for 3G / mobile connections and is the same in ther UK, Spain and pretty much everywhere.
The ISP does keep a record of which customer is/was connected to which IP address at which time. So if a user does use their IP address to do something naughty (not that I'm suggesting you would) then whether it's a landline or a mobile, "they" will be able to track you down.

As far as security goes, typically mobile phones connected to a 3G or 4G operator is not too bad - not completely secure, but better than using a WiFi connection from the phone in a public place. Public WiFi is susceptable to lots of different kinds of eavesdropping, where a baddie gets to see all the data "packets" that your device is sending to the WiFi router - and that it is sending back to you. Even an encrypted connection can be broken or subverted (where someone impersonates the WiFi router and you connect to *their* device, unwittingly). So in general, it's wise not to sit in a cafe and use their free WiFi to move your lottery win to an account in the Caymans

funinthesun

Oh no I am certainly not going to do anything naughty. I was just curious after what I had been told. Thank you for the replies.

Scribble

the ip changes, but the internet provider always knows who that ip belongs to and they keep logs.

funinthesun

It is fine that the iternet provider knows who I am as I am not intending doing anything wrong. Does anyone know what all the different numbers in an i.p. address represent.

Fred James

Why don't you just Google it?

pete_l

Broadly speaking, they are like the numbers in a telephone number. The first few are like country codes & area codes - they are allocated to BIG organisations in "blocks", usually in a specific geographic region while the ones on the right tend to be assigned haphazardly within the larger block.
There is no hard and fast boundary between the en-block numbers and the individually alloted ones, though generally users from the same ISP will get similar numbers - but you can't tell anything specific from one IP address or another.

funinthesun

Fred thank you, I tried googling but was even more mystified than I was before.

Hi Pete_I thank you for the info, that makes it a bit clearer.