IP Address Checking
I have tried to discourage the scammers and spammers out there by implementing a slightly new Contact
Form.
The email the footer will show the Country the Sender said they were in, plus the IP Address of the
Internet connection the PC is attached to, e.g.
--Message From----------------------
Name : Mr C. Artist
Email : CArtist@hotmail.com
Country : UK
Date : 12/08/2005 09:09:58 (GMT)
IPAddress: 195.166.232.4
-------------------------------------
Users are assigned IP addresses by Internet service providers (ISPs). ISPs obtain allocations of IP
addresses from a local Internet registry (LIR) or national Internet registry (NIR), or from their
appropriate Regional Internet Registry (RIR):
- AfriNIC - Africa Region
- APNIC - Asia/Pacific
Region
- ARIN - North America
Region
- LACNIC – Latin America and some Caribbean Islands
- RIPE - Europe, the Middle East, and
Central Asia
You may have to work your way through each of these, but I normally start with
RIPE. On the main RIPE
page use the Search form to check the IP Address:
This returns some info and we can see that the address is allocated to Africa which in itself is enough
to warn us off. However if you want to dig deeper then go to the AfriNIC
website and again do a WhoIs search on the IP Address. This time we get much more information,
including the ISP's address etc etc.
We all know the general countries these come from; Nigeria and other West African countries, and they
nearly all seem to use an online Email service like Yahoo or Hotmail. If you get suspect emails from other
countries let me know.
N.B. I have had a few dodgy ones who are using Satellite Internet Providers in the US or Europe.
This will give them a US or Europe IP Address because of this. To find this I have used the returned
company information to try and work out the web address of the company (usually the last part of the email
address with www. on the front) to browse the site and see what they offer.
This is fairly basic but I'm hoping it
might help a bit. If anyone else out there has other ideas that might help please let me know.
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