I don't think it is exaggerated at all, I won't use Craigs list because of all the stories I have heard. Years ago someone in this forum said he was safe on the net, no one could find him. Someone replied to his post with enough of his personal information that he didn't feel so safe anymore. Someone else said if you post a photo on the net they can come within a block of where the photo was taken. I head this story quite recently and don't know if it is true or not....A lady came into a large amount of money and she laid it out on the table, photographed it and posted it on the facebook or a place like that and someone was at her house in less than an hour and took the money. ????

I thought an IP lookup (for an individual) said nothing more to an outsider than the ISP and region - Bell South Atlanta or Verizon DC. Your ISP, of course, knows more.

Are you both sharing certain knowledge or just an apprehension?

Your neighbor doesn't really know what he is talking about; if he thinks that can be done, ask him to show you how. Now it's true that people do sometimes get cheated using Craigslist to conduct transactions, but it has nothing to do with people magically finding where you live through your IP address. All that can be done from an IP address is an approximate location. If a law enforcement agency wanted to know who someone was based on an IP address, they would typically try to trace the IP address to the ISP, and then likely need a search warrant or court order to get anything specific. For the average person, there is no way to get an actual location or street address from an IP address. Here is some info from the site iplocation.net:

"Pairing of IP address to a geographical location is called geolocation. There are times when you need to identify where your web visitors are coming from. You might have an ecommerce website, and would like to know where your potential customers are, pre-populate country code on forms, display different language and reduce credit card fraud based on geographic location. Or, you might want to fight against illegal spammers and hackers, and would like to locate source of a problem.

Although it would be nice to be able to find precise location of a visitor, it is almost impossible to find exact location of a host given its IP address. However, there are tools available to help identify approximate location of the host. ARIN Whois database provides a mechanism for finding contact and registration information for IP resources registered with ARIN.

You may also use 3rd party websites such as Geobytes or Dnsstuff to lookup the IP address. The whois lookup will reveal name of the ISP who owns that IP address, and the country where it is originated from. If you're lucky, you might also find the city of orgin. You may also use products developed by 3rd party companies like Ip2location. Our sister website, findmyip.org also provides a geographic information of your IP address.

You may also use reverse DNS to find out the hostname of the IP address, which might give you some clues. Many ISPs, Corporations and Academic institutions use location as a qualified hostname, although this is not always true. A couple of things to note here: (1) Reverse DNS translation does not always work. It depends on the correct configuration of the ISP's DNS server. (2) The US domain names such as .com, .net and .org does not always imply that the host is located in the United States.

You may use 'traceroute' command to find clues to the location of the IP address. The names of the routers through which packets flow from your host to the destination host might hint at the geographical path of the final location."

Here is a craigs list funny. A few months ago someone was selling tickets to the hockey game here. When people met the person they gave the cash and were told to pick up the tickets at will call under the name of Elvis. Oh yes people fell for it quite a few times that day and when they got to will call that night for the game soon learned of the scam. Why people were stupid enough to give the money up front without tickets in hand is beyong me but a few days later they did catch the scammer. Mary

Ok.
I still am not certain..
I did go to whoisip, just to try it, but I could not understand exactly what/where I was supposed to find the info on an email. For my 'trying', a friend sent an email. I am using an Ipad. There is supposed to be a 'history' at the end of the IP address of the person that sent the email. Well, I couldn't find it.........so that person could have lived next to me and I wouldn't' be able to tell!
As far as Craigslist, I meet them at WalMart parking lot, but when I sold my sofa they obviously had to come to my home....not too easy to put a sofa in a VW Bug!
On I go...
Thanks All

Ok.
I still am not certain..
I did go to whoisip, just to try it, but I could not understand exactly what/where I was supposed to find the info on an email. For my 'trying', a friend sent an email. I am using an Ipad. There is supposed to be a 'history' at the end of the IP address of the person that sent the email. Well, I couldn't find it.........so that person could have lived next to me and I wouldn't' be able to tell!
As far as Craigslist, I meet them at WalMart parking lot, but when I sold my sofa they obviously had to come to my home....not too easy to put a sofa in a VW Bug!
On I go...
Thanks All

Re guarding what I posted about the photo and the personal information of the poster who thought he was safe on the net, I got in this forum. We were even advised to go to photo bucket and use an option to stop the photo location from being released.

Emma I believe that is with the more modern cell phones and cameras. Scary stuff but I also think the owner can overcome this in the control area of the device.

Where is that option in photobucket? I don't use it enough to know wehre everything is and they keep changing things. Mary

You're friend is greatly exaggerating the potential problem. An IP address alone would only give you a general location, like a town. If the IP address came from a cell phone, the location can be many, many miles away from where the sender is located.

I've sold plenty of things on Craigslist and have never had anything remotely resembling a problem. Plenty of scammers and flakes but they're generally pretty easy to identify. Make sure you TALK to the person before agreeing to meet. Take ONLY CASH. No checks, no money orders, no PayPal, no wire/bank transerfers, and no shipping. Just CASH. Trust your gut, it something doesn't seem right, pass on the buyer. If you're uncomfortable about people coming to your house, meet at a local coffee shop or fast food restaurant. If a lot of money is involved, meet at your local bank branch. Talk to the manger and ask if you can borrow a cubicle or desk for a few minutes. Then once the transaction is completed, deposit the money. Real buyers are going to understand reasonable precautions. Remember you're asking the buyer to show up with a pocket full of cash and he doesn't know anything about you either.

Mike you are a man and probably won't have a serious problem unless your are selling something worth a lot of money. I have always been cautious more because I am not going to make it easy for someone to make me a victim. I bought and sold dolls for years. If I was home alone and a man had some dolls to sell me, I would raise the garage door and look at what he had there. My friend's daughter had a car for sale, the guy said he wanted it but needed the title, her followed her in. It was sheer luck that her husband came home for lunch and found the guy trying to rape her.

AClady, I haven't used PB since this site started allowing us to post without going through a middle man. I think it was in preferences, check there. I need to go there and cancel my account if that is possible.

Artcraftylady, go to user setting under your name, personal information, then privacy. You need to uncheck "show where my photos were taken".

WOW, there were a lot of cookies trying to get on my PC there, but I stopped them.

Ok thanks. I have been using image shack since webshots closed. Mary

I lost all my photos on PB, a photo of me is still, don't know why they left that one. It was 1954 or 55 and you should see the dress.

BTW, I saw another place to uncheck right below the one I mentioned. There were two that showed where the photos were taken.

This post was edited by EmmaR on Sun, Apr 14, 13 at 23:46

I had all mine backed up on memory stick. Mary

I found them. I also have them on my PC and on an external HD.

Facebook mapped me to my front street on the wrong side. They should not know my address or real name or phone. I figured out how to delete my account there. They don't make it easy to find how to delete your account from their computers.

Microsoft win8 has maps, they actually know my real name and address. I drug and moved my location marker on the win8 map out to one of the islands on the drive to the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Somebody was to drive to my location with that map, they might think I live in a highway rest station, surrounded with a great view :)

They spell it out in their help pages. Did you just deactivate or permanently delete as ther is a difference. To permanetly delete you need to fill out the form.

I have everything blocked there and only go on to play my few slots games so don't communicate with anyone on there. It's like anything for years, you can 't give out your personal info. Heck way before computers and internet our CC numbers were stolen 3 times and someone tried to apply for credit in our name but got caught. Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: How to delete facebook account

Someone on another forum told me that when she got her first computer she was told to use a fake name, address, the whole works. I do that now. I Google my real name nothing ever comes up and never has. My id name came up with my comments in THS, but that was years ago when I first discovered this place.

Folks, these expressed feelings of fear and paranoia are unwarranted.

Yes, you can be located easily. So what? Twenty years ago, the technology to do that was called the telephone book. Today, it's whitepages.com or from the zillion other bits of info online that are data fragments of one's life.

There are better things to worry about if that's what you like to do.

Exactly. I have friends that freak out when they realize if you google their home number you get there address and I have to explain if you are listed in the local phone book then you can be found in the online phone books. Mary