If you are chatting with a person on Yahoo Messenger, do you know how to find the Location of the person you are chatting with? You can use a simple command and some googling to find out the location of the person you are chatting with.
When ever you use the Internet, in fact any network, the communication should happen between 2 Computers which are uniquely identified by 2 IP Address. But in most cases these IP Address might not be unique for your Computer but unique for your ISP. Simply speaking the router at your ISP is connected to the Internet. The connection between your computer and your ISP is a local network. Your ISP Routers acts as the middle man is making the Internet requests on your behalf and getting the Internet results back to your machine. So you can in most cases trace back an internet connection to the ISP, i.e. to the Country, State, City and ISP.
When ever you chat with a person using Yahoo Messenger your messages are sent to a Yahoo Server and the Server relays the messages to the person you the chatting with. So if you find the IP Address in such a scenario you will find the IP Address of the Server but not of the person who is chatting with you. Yahoo Messenger uses P2p Technology when you transfer a file from your system to the other persons system. So when you find out the IP Address of the Destination Computer when you do a Yahoo File Transfer you can actually find out the IP of the other person and hence the location.
When you are trying to find out the Location of the person chatting with you, you should make him accept a file transfer request, in this way a connection would be established between your computer and his computer. Remember to send a file which is at least 3-4 MB in size so that you have some time to capture the active connections. Once he accepts and the file transfer starts, open command prompt and type the command netstat –n, this would give active TCP Connections on each Port.
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name>netstat –n
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 10.0.0.9:1101 10.0.0.191:1025 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.0.0.59:1881 10.0.0.184:1372 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.0.0.59:2301 208.88.182.2:80 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.0.0.59:2302 208.88.182.3:80 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.0.0.59:2303 208.88.182.3:80 ESTABLISHED
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name>
The out put of netstat –n command would be something similar to the above. From the above list you need to filter the Foreign Address filed to get the IP Address of the Person chatting with you. When you are trying this close all Internet Applications like Messengers and File Sharing application and close all browser windows. Then you would have very few results and you can easily filter the IP Addresses.
You can use the Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstat to find more about the Netstat command.
You can use the Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers to filter the foreign address based on port numbers.
Once you find the IP Address you can go a site like http://tools.whois.net/whoisbyip/ to find who is of that IP Address. Whois basically gives details like the address of registration, company name and contact details.
To find your own IP Address you can use the command ipconfig /all.
If you need any further clarification please get back to me.
For more blogs of Technology check my current blog at www.sunilsaripalli.com

12 comments
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August 7, 2008 at 7:15 am
damon
just curious, using netstat to obtain the list of ip addresses, those ip addresses are not the ip addresses of the people whom i’m talking to? i suspect they are the IP of the messaging server? but they are kinda near?
August 7, 2008 at 9:25 am
Sunil Saripalli
If you have read my post i said to initiate a file transfer before using the netstat command. If you are using the netstat command while chatting on messenger u would get only the chat servers address. But when you initiate a file transfer a connection would be made between ur comp and the comp at the other end. If he is using a Public IP u can trace to him, or you can trace to the Public IP of the ISP he is using.
September 6, 2008 at 8:21 am
sujan
Hi i have a doubt that without using file transfer can’t we detect other person’s ip address.bcoz wen i am chatting with other persons one fellow is coming and harrassing me.how he knows my id.i didnt give him my id?but suddemly he is coming in the chat conversation(wen i do with others).is this possible?please give me reply.
December 10, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Vijay
the ip address of the comp can be located unless the file transfer is made,but if only the conversation is done and web cam is used then can the person be located?
please reply
February 6, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Raj Baddam
Hi,
I would appreciate if you can tell me a method to find out the location of a person by using an email received from that person.
Thanks
March 27, 2009 at 12:53 pm
George
hi there how can i find out the person location when i’m chatting by skype?
April 23, 2009 at 7:02 am
hamud
http://lehliumania2.wordpress.com/lehliu-mania/ this is the blog that i want to find owner ip can you help me, only the ip i want( contact me at liviu_cikiu2000@yahoo.com)
June 7, 2009 at 3:30 pm
kumar
sir,
how to find ip address of a blog and the the person created it?
August 11, 2009 at 8:51 am
kasi
can we sent some file 2 one’s pc ,if we know the ip address of that?
September 2, 2009 at 1:55 pm
vipul
hi sunil
i dont know how we can fillter foreign addresses
September 17, 2009 at 7:03 am
santosh
when i type nestat -n command in command prompt, i receive the message that ‘nestat’ is not recognised as the external or internal command, operable program or batch file. why it is so and how can i run the nestat command from my pc to find the ip address of a person whom i am chatting with?
September 17, 2009 at 8:32 am
Sunil Saripalli
The command is netstat -n not nestat -n