Mobile Network IP Address?

[onetimething]

My email account was hacked the other day. I learned about the "view recent sign in" feature on Yahoo where it shows you a history going back a day or so of all of your sign-in attempts and the location (just the city/country) and IP address, and whether accessed via PC or mobile. The PC's were easy to pick out.....home and work. The mobile, I saw two different ones the day of the hacking, one in Massachusetts in the morning hours, and then one in New York in the afternoon. I am in New York, so I assumed the NY was me and the MA was a hacker. Today, I view the recent sign ins and see a different IP address for a mobile network from Ohio. I thought that I had been hacked again. Then I tested something out, logged on with my phone, and then checked and it looked like the Ohio IP address actually WAS my phone. This may be a naive question, but could my phone's IP address be constantly changing over that wide of an area, where maybe it's assigned one temporarily in one area, and then switches? Not a tech geek here, so dumb this down for me please. Thanks.

 

[borg69unimatrix]

Yahoo is notorious for being hacked. You really should consider switching to Gmail, or some other better run e-mail service... and change your passwords regularly.

 

[OPHELIA_HARDIN]

Interesting question. Hope someone comes up with an answer!

 

[Corny]

There is no clear way of determining the "location" of an IP address, even less so with mobile networks where often an IP is shared by many customers. There are so called geo-databases which try to match an IP to a location (and which yahoo is using in this case), but you should always just see them as a "good estimate". And sometimes not even that.

 

[palbert]

There is no clear way of determining the "location" of an IP address, even less so with mobile networks where often an IP is shared by many customers. There are so called geo-databases which try to match an IP to a location (and which yahoo is using in this case), but you should always just see them as a "good estimate". And sometimes not even that.

Then how do you track a banned - never to return - member? (Unless that reveals a secret from behind Dr. Oz's curtain.)

 

[Corny]

How would it help us to know for sure to which big city a poster is closest? It's not like there is only one person from each region here

 

[T-Rexx]

This may be a naive question, but could my phone's IP address be constantly changing over that wide of an area, where maybe it's assigned one temporarily in one area, and then switches?

Yes, that is possible.

Because of the nature of mobile networks (at least in the USA), the IP which is assigned to your device may show a location hundreds of miles from your actual location.

When I login with my 3G connection, I am frequently assigned a Nebraska IP, even though I am physically in Ohio. Also, mobile IPs tend to be truly dynamically assigned (which means they change every time you login), while wired connections tend to assign the same IP to your connection every time you login (even though technically most of them are also dynamic).

 

[burke67]

Yes it could. And, it is. As your investigation has proved.

Keep in mind that your phone connects to the carrier's cellular network and that cellular network then routes your internet requests to a particular point where the cellular carrier's network connects to the internet. That connection between the two could be anywhere, and there may be many of them. What cellular network bridge point connection you reach the internet through is subject to usage, and bandwidth availability.

The IP address you noted in your investigation isn't even an IP assigned to your phone. Rather, the IP of the endpoint accessing the internet from the cellular network.

We have to keep in mind that a cellular network is not an IP based network.