IP Lookup

What Your IP Address Reveals About You — and What It Doesn't

Your IP address is the numerical label assigned to your device by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Every time you connect to a website, server, or online service, your IP address is visible to that server — it is a fundamental requirement of how the internet works.

What an IP address actually reveals is more limited than most people assume. Geolocation databases can typically identify the country with 99% accuracy and the city-level location with around 80% accuracy. What they reveal is your approximate city, your ISP, and the organisation that registered the IP block. They do not reveal your name, your street address, your phone number, or your browsing history — none of that information is encoded in an IP address.

Your ISP, however, sees considerably more. Because your broadband connection runs through their infrastructure, they can observe all unencrypted traffic on your connection — including which websites you visit and when. Encrypted traffic (HTTPS, TLS) hides the content of your communications but not the destination IP address. This is why privacy-conscious users use VPNs or encrypted DNS resolvers like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1.

There is also an important distinction between your private IP (the address your router assigns to your device — usually something like 192.168.x.x) and your public IP (the address your ISP assigns to your router, visible to the outside world). This tool shows your public IP — the one websites see. Your private IP stays within your home network and is not visible on the internet.

IP addresses can be static (fixed, the same every time you connect) or dynamic (reassigned periodically). Most Singapore home broadband users receive a dynamic IP — Singtel, StarHub, and M1 typically reassign IPs each time your router reconnects. Business broadband customers and those on certain plans can request static IPs, which are common for running servers.

IPv4 vs IPv6: Singapore's Transition and What It Means for You

IPv4, introduced in 1983, uses a 32-bit address format — the familiar four-number notation like 203.116.12.45. This allows for approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses, a number that seemed enormous in the 1980s but proved wholly insufficient as internet adoption exploded across the globe. In February 2011, IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) officially exhausted its pool of IPv4 addresses. New allocations now come only from reclaimed blocks or transfers between organisations.

IPv6 was developed to solve this exhaustion. It uses a 128-bit address format — written as eight groups of hexadecimal digits, separated by colons (e.g. 2400:6180::1). This allows for 340 undecillion unique addresses — a number so large it could assign a unique address to every atom on Earth's surface and still have addresses to spare.

Singapore has been at the forefront of IPv6 adoption in Southeast Asia. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) issued a national IPv6 transition mandate, requiring all major ISPs to support IPv6 dual-stack deployment for both residential and business customers. By 2025, Singapore's IPv6 adoption rate stood at approximately 55–60% — one of the highest in ASEAN. If your IP address starts with something like 2400:6180:: or similar hexadecimal notation, you already have an IPv6 address. Most modern devices support both formats simultaneously (called dual-stack), using IPv6 when available and falling back to IPv4 when needed.

For ASEAN as a region, IPv6 adoption is accelerating as mobile internet growth continues. Countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are all seeing rapid increases in internet-connected devices — particularly smartphones — where IPv6 is often the primary protocol on mobile networks.

VPNs, Proxies and IP Masking: A Plain-English Guide for ASEAN Users

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) works by routing your internet traffic through a server operated by the VPN provider. When you connect to a VPN, websites you visit see the VPN server's IP address instead of your own. This effectively hides your true public IP from external services.

VPN usage in Singapore has grown significantly, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic as remote work became widespread. Common reasons Singaporeans use VPNs include accessing geo-restricted streaming content (such as US Netflix libraries), maintaining privacy on public Wi-Fi, and enabling secure remote access to corporate networks.

The legal status of VPNs varies across ASEAN. In Singapore and Malaysia, VPN use is legal. In Indonesia, VPNs occupy a grey area — they are widely used but unregulated. In Vietnam and China, VPN use is restricted or banned, though enforcement varies. Services like NordVPN and ExpressVPN are popular throughout the region. Always check local regulations before using a VPN.

Proxy servers work similarly to VPNs but typically only route specific application traffic (such as browser traffic) rather than all traffic on your device. They are generally less private than VPNs as they do not encrypt your traffic. Tor (The Onion Router) takes IP masking a step further, routing traffic through multiple volunteer-operated nodes to make tracing significantly more difficult — though at the cost of much slower connection speeds.

Online gaming platforms and streaming services have become increasingly sophisticated at detecting and blocking VPN IPs. This is done by maintaining blocklists of known VPN server IP ranges. When a streaming service blocks a VPN IP, users often find that switching to a different VPN server or provider — one with less widely known IP ranges — restores access temporarily. An "IP ban" in online games typically means the game server has blocked your IP address, either because of rule violations or because your IP is on a shared blocklist. If you receive an unjust IP ban, contacting the game publisher's support with your IP details (from this tool) is the standard first step.