Is there a service, paid or free, that allows you to see the full ip address of a visitor?

[nsauser]

We're looking to deal with PPC click fraud, presumably from competitors. Is there a service that allows you to see the full IP of a website visitor? Mainly, the free services only give you the ISP and city. WhatismyIP.com says that they do not know of a way other than court order to get the full location of a web visitor. Anyone else know?

[kayintveen_MD]

In php you can easily get the Ip address by using

but getting a full address is impossible. often you can get as close as a neighbourhood.

You have things like: http://www.iplocation.net/ and http://www.whatsmyip.org/ip-geo-location/

[DemiGR]

Clicky allows you to see IP addresses and is free

[alecfwilson]

If someone is masking their IP, even if you were able to get the full IP, it wouldn't be useful. Any PPC click fraud will be doing this, and at a scale that they believe could fool Google, so any free or affordable tool likely won't catch it. However, if you are looking for IP logging (a tool that actually records IP addresses and attempts to link to businesses), check out a1webstats. It's not super accurate on the business names, but it does record all visitors and their IP. I've attached a redacted screenshot of an example.

They've got a 30 day free trial if you are curious and just want to take a look. We tried using them to ID companies that weren't converting, but they match most of them with the telecom, rather than the actual company.

If you are looking to precisely identify where an IP address originated, I'm afraid you'll have to contact the NSA. The best resource I know of is here: http://www.iplocation.net/, which states "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." It does go on to list some more tools that you could try and use, but again, click fraud practitioners will be using much more powerful tools to disguise themselves.

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[dianemahan]

We've been dealing with the same thing so we tested our own IP address to see what came up. We were surprised that it gave our location as miles away. Right city but wrong neighborhood.

[kayintveen_MD]

Thats very good possible. its the nearest connection block of the network. can be in the same street but when living in a small village it can be few villages away

[Ontarioseo]

I would second Clicky, that should give you all you need, and has the advantage of tagging suspect visitors, provided they aren't being overly sneaky.

[snetface]

You can see all the IP addresses in server logs, or in your case possibly a javascript equivalent of the code posted by microdesign will be a more viable solution, as you are not trying to get the IPs of hits to your own server, but for your ads hosted on other sites.

On the downside: this will not solve your issue. If anybody only a little bit experienced is doing a click fraud it is very likely that they are using zombies or bot networks to reach their goal.

If they are using hacked servers, that is an easier solution, you just have to look at irregularly high number of hits from the same IP address accross your network, and block the IP.

Using cookies and testing for them is a wise decision, because a php only bot won't be able to mimic cookies, if you set them with javascript.

If you do all the above, there are still ways around it. If I were you I would contact a company experienced in user validating, there is no one stop shop solution for what you are trying to do.