[zdw]

Depends on what the "IT Genius" tried.

For example, IP addresses (even internal unroutable ones) are frequently passed along in email headers. If he was able to find an IP and an email sent by his friend in the same timeframe, that would be a good correlation. I've done this on occasion when someone's external IP has dynamically changed but they sent email, in order to fix VPN connections.

Pinning it on the son is the stretch here.

[bduerst]

Even with the IP address from the header, which geolocation service did he use to pinpoint the street address?

If it's like most ISPs, this IP address is subject to change every couple of days, so this IP location service would need to be updated with personal addresses, across the globe, that often.

[tedivm]

Most ISPs don't change their IPs nearly that often. This isn't the 90s where everyone was dialing in, and changing an ip address would cause existing connections to fail, making the service look crappy. Most of the time the IP only changes when there's maintenance or something that requires it, or the modem gets disconnected.

Using a geolocation service isn't needed for the scenario you're replying to. If it was me, and I had this trolls ip, the first thing I would do it compare it to the other emails and connections that occurred simply to group the troll's crap together. In this situation the friend's email would have shown up to (being sent from the same house), and I doubt Mr. Traynor needed a geolocation service to look up the address of his friend.

[jerrya]

I have a "dynamic" IP address from Cox, it has changed three times in six years.

[bduerst]

Anecdotal, but did you request the static IP? I can't imagine Cox handing those out like Pez.

[jerrya]

I think that's the point.

Cox (and my understanding many other ISPs as well) CHARGE for static IPs, but give out dynamic IPs that basically never change because it is actually just easier for them to set the service up that way.

The few times the IP address changed was when they did an upgrade at their site, a very long outage, and I think a time when an installer screwed up a neighbors installation.

I cannot guarantee my address tonight will be what it is now, but the reality is, it will be.

I believe (stress no real evidence of this) that my home router tries to give out the same IP addresses to the same MAC addresses. I say this because after I reboot the router, my various machines will pop up at the same IP addresses they had before (and none of them are Apple products known to do this on purpose.)

[aidenn0]

I have cox as well and my IP only changes when:

1) My cable modem has been offline for a while (e.g. power failure) 2) My subnet changes, which has happened twice in 6 years.