IP Address - Incorrect

I'm glad I haven't tried to complete any sites yet.

I recently chatted with David from redbull and he said that my IP address stated I was from BC. I actually live in Ontario.

I live in Chapleau, Ontario.

And sometime last year, my IP address stated I was from Sudbury, Ontario.

Whats the deal here? Why would my IP address appear different sometimes? I've used this computer my whole life and have not changed a thing really.

I was on a website and my best friend signed up for it as well. No, he did not register using my PC. He registered at his house. It was a game site and the admin thought I was cheating and made a duplicate account in order to do so. He stated that our IP addresses were the same, which is 100% false.

What the hell is going on?

IP addresses are not necessarily tied to your location. This is a common misunderstanding and the reason site operators should never rely on IP to determine location.

IP's are typically assigned to ISP's in blocks based on their [bceb12c08cc]country[/bceb12c08cc], and can be used anywhere within the country that they want to use them. Traceroutes aren't always reliable especially when the last 2 hops (with the final hop being the user) straddle a border. Your IP correctly indicates you are in Canada, which about as reliable as you can get with an IP. They almost never indicate city unless you live in a major city, and often don't even indicate the correct state or province.

Unless you have a static IP from your ISP (and 99% of home users don't) then you will get a new IP every few days. Your ISP has a fixed block of IP's for your market, and whenever your IP lease expires and you get a new one, somebody else will be assigned your old one. As unlikely a coincidence as it would seem, it's technically possible your friend could have been assigned your same IP as you had a prior time. Now if you both signed up simultaneously from different locations and they claim you still have the same IP, then your ISP might be proxying everything on their backend. Some ISP's do this, and you have no control over it.

Thank you very much for explaining all of that to me.

Means a lot, very much appreciated.