Can e-mail addresses & other personal informations be traced through your IP address?

In most cases, no. You are likely to be using a dynamic IP address that is changing. You could be traced to the owner of the IP block from which it was allocated (almost certainly your ISP). The ISP may have records to show what MAC numbers (Media Access Control, not the Apple computers! every interface hardware card should have a unique MAC, although these can be cloned) the IPs are allocated to at a particular time, but then someone would have to know the MAC of your cable modem/router or whatever. The police could probably manage the complete trace through if they got the records from the ISP but it’s not something that anyone could manage to do easily. You’d have to be doing something seriously bad before anyone would allocate the time and resources to find you.

They might be able to tell what town you live in, but that’s as much as they can get from your IP address, unless you have a static IP (most people don’t). The police might be able to get more details (eg your name and address) if you were being investigated for a grime, but the public couldn’t get that sort of info.

Any information more than that, they might get by carefully reading and remembering what you or your friends post on social networks.

Check out the tests you can perform on your own computer at spinrite.com with Steve Gibson’s “Shields Up!” and other tests. Yes, he does offer security products for sale there, but he has so many free tests and services that I’ve been going there for years with each new computer / upgrade or major change I make to my systems.

Highly recommended.

Thank you very much for your answers. I was just wondering… there’s this person on tumblr, who was left an offensive message on her ask box by a guy. She was able to get the person’s IP, his e-mail, and even posted the guy’s pictures and social network links. I was wondering how she did that. I wanted to ask her but I presume she won’t tell me.

It’s not hard to “hack” in to find more than enough personal informations just by finding out the ip though i won’t start discussing this.

Get some friends with some knowledge then you can find a lot of things.

Though why bother ? a lot of people talk bullshit over the internet because they live a pathetic normal life and they hide behind a screen. [ most won’t dare to say them in real life ]

@hibernate I actually want know how that is done. :) Will find friends with knowledge on ‘hacking’ LOL

A real hacker won’t bother with childish acts like such :P

I know the basics but i used them only when people did actual harm not just lame comments over facebook or used foul language in chat programs.

If people value their privacy they should live alone in the forests [ lol ]

<—-packing for move to forest . . .