Cybercriminals can use a variety of methods to obtain an IP address. The two most common methods are social engineering and Internet stalking.

Social Engineering.
Attackers can use social engineering to trick you into revealing your IP address. For example, they can find you on Skype or a similar instant messaging application that uses IP addresses to communicate. If you’re communicating with strangers on these applications, it’s important to know that they can see your IP address. Attackers can use the Skype Resolver tool to identify your IP address from your username.

Internet stalking
Attackers can track your IP address simply by observing your online activity. Any online activity can reveal your IP address, from playing video games to comments on websites and forums.

Once they have your IP address, attackers can go to an IP tracking website, such as whatismyipaddress.com, enter it and get a rough idea of your location. They can then use other data from public sources to see if the IP address is associated with you specifically. They can also use LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks to find out where you live, and then check to see if that matches the data they get from the IP address.

If a Facebook stalker uses a spyware phishing attack against people with your name, they can verify your identity from the IP address on your system.

If cybercriminals know your IP address, they will be able to attack you or even impersonate you. It’s important to be aware of these risks and ways to combat them. These risks include:

Downloading illegal content from your IP address
Attackers have been known to use compromised IP addresses to download illegal content and other materials, and in doing so, want to avoid tracking such downloads. For example, using your IP address identifier, attackers can download pirated movies, music, and videos that violate your ISP’s terms of use, and, more seriously, content related to terrorism or child pornography. This could mean that through someone else’s fault, you could attract the attention of law enforcement.

Location Tracking.
If attackers know your IP address, they can use geolocation technology to determine your region, city and country. They only need to do a little digging on social media to identify your home. Then they can stage a burglary when they find out you’re not home.

A direct attack on your network
Attackers can target your network directly with different types of attacks. One of the most popular is a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. In this type of cyber attack, attackers use previously infected machines to generate a large number of requests to the target system or server. This puts too much load on the servers and results in a disruption of services. Essentially, it shuts down the Internet. Such an attack usually targets video game companies and services, but it can also be used against individuals, although this is much less common. Online gamers are at particularly high risk because their screen is visible when streaming (and their IP address can be detected on it).

Hacking the device
Ports and IP addresses are used to connect to the Internet. There are thousands of ports for each IP address, and an intruder who knows your IP address can check them and try to establish a connection. For example, he can get hold of your phone and steal your information. If an intruder gains access to your device, he or she might install malware on it.

How to protect and hide your IP address
Hiding your IP address is a way to protect your personal information and your identity online. There are two main ways to hide your IP address:

Using a proxy server.
Using a virtual private network (VPN).
A proxy server is an intermediate server through which traffic is redirected.

The Internet servers you visit only see the IP address of this proxy server, not your IP address.
When these servers transmit response information to you, it is routed to the proxy server, which then forwards it to you.
The disadvantage of proxy servers is that some services can spy on you, so it’s important to use only trusted proxy servers. Depending on the proxy server you use, ads may be added to your browser.