Find Who Is Behind IP Address

Hey, so I have been emailed and IMed by a person claiming to be someone that I don't think they are. Namely, they claim to be a college student in Malibu, but I traced the IP address from an email to Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems) origating in Long Island.

So basically, my question is, is there anyway to find out the real identity behind this IP Address? I am assuming it would take some more skills than using whois, and might be a bit shadier as well. The skills part is beyond me--if anyone wants to help me out though beyond just advice, pm me and I will give you the IP Address.

If it's a private user, and the IP is just going back to a customer of the ISP, then no.

Would you like it if anyone could trace back anything you did to that kind of personal info?

Technically, yes you could. However, it would not be definitive nor would it be easy. If you were to say, know they have an account somewhere that was verifiable then you could match IP's.

The difficulty is they could be emailing you from say their house (which would have one IP) at some time, from their school (which would have a 2nd IP) at another, and from an Internet cafe, library, etc. (which would each have different IPs) at another time. Furthermore, if their email is hosted out of a university or ISP or something, who's to say that their whole email server is NOT hosted out of NY? Or if they outsource their mail?

So, could you techincally ID someone based on their IP? Yes, but you'd have to be very thorough and even more lucky.

Woo Optimum Online. Represent.

There's little more you can do other than look up their IP as you've done, maybe searching the web for the IP to see if it's come up anywhere else? The only way to get personal information about the end user would be to request the ISP to release it, but as a Cablevision customer, I know they won't do that much without a court order and even then they're reluctant.

Yeah, I highly HIGHLY, doubt that any ISp would release someone's name to me if I called them with an IP Address. And I would actually hope that they wouldn't, because I would want my ISP to protect my privacy in the same way.

I really doubt that this person actually goes to a certain university in Malibu though, because I used ARIN Whois on my own IP Address and it comes up with the name of my college, and a contact number to the college IT department.

Although the second thing I am wondering--when I did a the geographic search on the IP Address, did that give me the actual location from where the email (and several IMs) originated? Or did it give me the location of Optimum Online or something?

It's based on where that IP address block is located. If the IP traces back to Optimum Online, then the locations will trace back to somewhere within that ISP's service area.

Assuming, of course, that the IP hasn't been falsified. And it could be that someone has a mailserver set up at home or something, that they route mail through - they could access and send mail from Malibu, but by all external appearances it would look like it originates in Long Island.

How'd you rip their IP address from an email, anyhow? Just pulling it from the message header? I'm not sure the extent that the headers can be falsified, but return addresses at least can.

The question is - does the return address claim to be from Malibu? I.e., does it look like a school email account?

I pulled it from the message header. It is an AOL AIM email account Basically, to make a long story short, I was having a political debate on another forum (imagine that...haha) and i got to chatting with someone from it who claimed to be a 19 year old girl who went to Pepperdine, and lived in Malibu. We have had some interesting and friendly emails (to and from AIM email accounts, not school emails), and I was just trying to figure out if its actually a 19 year old girl from Pepperdine and not some creepy old guy, in which case I would stop conversing...

IF THE email was threatening then If you know the ip address and found out the ISP you can either email or contact the isp and ask them politely to loo into the IP address. For instance-My firewall is picking up a IP address that is hammering my connection with udp connection or something else, then I can save the log to notepad and email the isp to look into the ip address oin there network to see if the user has something on there computer that is broadcasting out that looks out of the originary. I could really care less who the name is and also if you called into were i work and asked about this and the name then it would be a instant NO. But if you can provide to me the log info of the ip the i will try to look into the connection to see if we notice anything from our end. We have done this in the past were we run a report and noticing 1000+ connections coming from some ones modem, I will call the customer and nicely explain to them what were seeing from our end. 90% of the time they are gratefull and run a scan and do find something.. low and behold there pc is faster also..or they find out they have a unsecured network..

As far as getting a email from someone you think you know?? Could be spoofed and good luck..

Well you could try
This
if you look at Windsor on the Lat/Long charts the #'s are Windsor AP lat 42° 16' N long 82° 58' W
while using said link it gives a more accurate lat and long with my routers ip
How accurate the addy is I do not know