# How is this person hiding his IP address?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 11, 2007, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368 "2007-10-11T18:43:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/1 "2007-10-11T18:43:39Z")
Is it possible for people to hide and/or spoof IP addresses from elsewhere in the world?
I have a bozo commenting on a blog. I suspect he’s in another country, but the hits are coming from NY. Is that possible?
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### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/2 "2007-10-11T18:46:22Z")
There are proxy sites, which allow a user to seem like they are coming from the Ip of the proxy:
[http://www.freeproxysite.com/](http://www.freeproxysite.com/)
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/3 "2007-10-11T18:52:55Z")
[QUOTE=Revtim]
There are proxy sites, which allow a user to seem like they are coming from the Ip of the proxy:
> **[freeproxysite.com](http://www.freeproxysite.com/)**
[/QUOTE]
Okay. Is there anyway to know that a specific IP address is being used as a proxy?
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/4 "2007-10-11T18:56:43Z")
Not always, but you can try doing a Whois lookup on it. If, like most script kiddy (L)users, they found proxy on a search engine, you can try typing it into Google. If it’s an established public proxy, that ought to return a few hits.
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### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/5 "2007-10-11T18:59:33Z")
Run it through here: [http://whois.domaintools.com/](http://whois.domaintools.com/)
It should tell you if the IP has caused (reported) problems in the past or not.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2007, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-this-person-hiding-his-ip-address/422368/6 "2007-10-11T19:03:33Z")
Aha. Thanks. Yes, it looks like the NY IP address has had problems.
This guy is one of the stupider people I’ve ever run across, so I sincerely doubt he can do anything fancy to hide his tracks.