What to do if someone Steals your IP address?

Most of us may or may not know that an IP address can be stolen, hacked and used for illegal activities over the internet. Of course there is a way to determine whether the IP address has been stolen or not. We can compare our IP addresses with our home addresses. Just like our home address is used for delivering the packets on the right place, similarly the IP address is used for delivering right data packets at the right place. Although nobody, not even your ISP can know what internet activities you are doing. Yes but they can trace the activities of the public IP address- the one which is used by the router for internet access. And if any unpleasant activities are going on using your IP your ISP might contact you or warn you to stop any illegal activity, even if you are not doing them.

As said earlier the public IP address can be easily found on the internet. Your general location and your ISP can be easily found. Your ISP could think it as yours, and will do so if ordered.

Below are few possibilities through which you can suspect that something fishy is going on:

• It’s possible that your family members or your roommates might be using you home network which has the same IP address. If not you then they might be doing anything illegal, knowingly or unknowingly. The best solution is to have a detailed discussion with them about what is going wrong and instruct them clearly to stop such activities, if anything suspicious is found.
• It’s quite possible that someone around your house can hack your Wi-Fi network’s password and using it without your consent. You can simply change the password of your Wi-Fi network and stop any illegal thing happen. This will also help in tightening your router’s security.
• As soon as your ISP starts giving notice about any illegal activity happening from your IP address which you’ve not done; you can suspect that your IP address has been stolen. You can ask them simply to provide you a new IP address.
• You can also keep in mind that mostly domestic ISP use the dynamic IP address; which means that the ISP will keep changing your IP address from time to time. If there is any sort of complaint from the ISP you can inform hem the time period for which you’ve used that IP address.
• It’s also possible that someone near or far off might be hoaxing your IP address. The solution is simple, just contact your ISP and ask them for a new one. If they co-operate any illegal activity can be stopped and the problem can be solved.

You can also unplugging your modem for 20-25 minutes and start it to obtain a new IP address, you can check you IP before and after to see whether it has changed or not at whatismyip.com. However there is no such big illegal or weird activity which can be done by stealing your IP address so there is nothing to worry much.