A few years ago, tools to find the address by entering phone number were very valuable.  It was fun and sometimes useful to get the address of people who talk with us on the phone.  Nowadays, the first way to talk with friends is internet, and the phone number is replaced with instant message ID, or IRC nickname.

It is very hard to find the address of someone only knowing his instant message ID or IRC nickname, but you can find it’s location if you know his IP address.

The IP address is not easy to get, but you can give it a try.  When talking with someone on instant message, close all other programs, then go to Start, Run, and type “cmd”. In the windows that opens, type “netstat”.  Through this command, all open connections will be showed.  If you closed all other programs, you can figure out easy which is the IP address you need. 

Now that you have the IP address, use the tool at Ip address lookup to get the location. You can zoom in or out to get more details. Also, with this tool you can find the location of someone who posted something on your blog, forum or website.

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