Want to know how to trace an IP address.

We have all seen those emails about winning lotteries or account about to shut down. Easy to spot, right? But what happens when the email looks almost identical to the real thing?
In this guide, we will do fun detective work, starting from the ping an IP, all the way to reading real email headers (I’ll even show you one from Medium.com).

Legal & privacy note: Don’t attempt hacking and use this for learning purpose only.

Why Learn to Trace an IP

An IP address is like a street number on the internet. Tracing it can answer simple but useful questions:

• Can I trust the message in my inbox?
• Does the route look normal, or does it jump through strange servers?
• Is the website hosted in the U.S., Europe, or somewhere else?

I use tracing whenever I get a message that looks urgent or too good to be true. One lookup often shows the truth.

Hands-On:

Let’s take Google DNS 8.8.8.8 for the testing purpose.

IP: 8.8.8.8