When you visit a website, your computer is assigned an IP address, typically by your ISP (Internet Service Provider) such as Comcast or AT&T. These ISPs maintain long lists of known ‘bad’ or spammy IP addresses that can cause all sorts of problems (such as email spam and pop-ups).
If you’re having problems with junk emails sent to you through your free Yahoo account, it’s likely due at least in part to the fact that your computer may have been blacklisted and could be sending out spam or malware from time to time (depending on if you’re using the spyware yourself).
Find Out For Free If My IP Reputation Is Poor
The following steps will help you find out for free if your IP reputation is poor,
1. Go to https://www.iplocation.net/find-ip-address/. This is a free tool that will show your physical location along with your ISP and other details about your computer’s IP address, including whether it has been flagged as being potentially dangerous or malicious. The results are not 100% accurate but are close enough to give you a good idea of where you might want to begin troubleshooting problems caused by an incorrect IP reputation.
2. If your IP address shows up on this list at the IP location, try changing it first thing first before moving on to further steps. To do so simply install something like Hotspot Shield VPN for Windows 10, which will allow you to select the alternative US or UK-based IP which is not listed with the IP location.
3. Change DNS to Google Public DNS. Go to Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center, then click on Change adapter settings on the left menu. Now right-click your network connection and choose Properties from the list.
4. In the window that pops up, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) from the connection’s properties and click the Properties button. When you see a new dialog box titled “Internet Protocol Version 4”, go ahead and check “Use the following DNS server addresses” radio button, enter 8.8.8.8 as Preferred DNS Server and 8.8.4.4 as Alternate DNS Server.
5. Once you are done with changing your network adapter’s settings, reboot your router for 10 minutes or by turning it off and on manually for 5 times to make sure new settings take effect across the network devices connected to this router (it is most probably that all your home network devices are configured to use your router’s IP address). If you still see a bad IP reputation, stay at the IP location, continue to the next step.
6. The internet service provider you choose can make a big difference in your experience with online gaming or other websites that reduce speeds based on an IP reputation list. Some ISPs are more aggressive about listing known spam IP addresses than others, so if it’s difficult for you to access a website because of a poor IP reputation then consider switching to a different ISP.
This could help you bypass these problems altogether while still allowing you to maintain your current connection speed and latency. While this is the most expensive option, it’s also one of the easiest ways to solve problems related to bad IP reputation!
Finding IP Reputation For Free Can Also Be Done Through WIRESHARK
1. Download Wireshark from https://www.wireshark.org/.
2. Run it by double-clicking on the downloaded file or opening up a command prompt and typing in ‘Wireshark’. This will start the program, but you need to first ensure that you’re capturing packets on your own network interface, not some other device’s connection (i.e., if you are trying to find out your IP address reputation on another computer, make sure you have Wireshark running on that PC instead of this one). To do so go to the Capture menu bar item at the top of the screen and select Interfaces
3. In this new window that pops up, click the check box next to your network interface card (NIC) so that it is selected, then select OK. Wireshark will now start capturing data coming to and from this specific NIC.
4. Again, remember that you need to do this on the computer whose IP reputation you want to find out or check its history, not on your own Windows PC. So go ahead and visit any website at all, like www.google.com for example, if you’re trying to find out Google’s poor IP reputation list – some ISPs don’t even allow their end users access to Google websites because of bad IP reputation! If this step is successful then you should see some packets being captured by Wireshark.
5. Now go back to the Capture menu bar item again and select Stop. Wireshark will stop capturing data packets coming in and out of this NIC.
6. Once you have stopped capturing, go ahead and navigate to Statistics > Endpoints from the main menu bar at the top of the screen, then click on any one of your network interfaces except for loopback interface (e.g., if your NIC card is called ‘WiFi Adapter’, make sure you click ‘Ethernet adapter #2‘ instead).
You’ll see a new window appear with all sorts of information about your device’s IP addresses – both local ones associated with this particular NIC as well as remote ones can be seen here among other things. This is the information you want to look for in order to find out your IP reputation – if any of these IPs have a bad reputation, it’ll come up as such on Wireshark.
Conclusion
If your IP address has been listed by iplocation.net as being potentially dangerous or suspicious, it may be worth changing your DNS to use Google Public DNS, which is much more strict in not listing known ‘bad’ IPs that are used for spamming activity.
Another option if you can’t change DNS but still want to play an online game with a poor IP address is to simply choose another ISP when connecting through Windows 10. Switching ISP often leads to completely different IP addresses, so this may be the simplest way to bypass any problems caused by blacklisted IPs entirely – but like I already mentioned, it’s also one of the most expensive options out there!
Finding IP Reputation for free can be done through WIRESHARK instead of iplocation.net’s service. The only drawback is that it will require command-line skills in order to get the job done, so not everyone can use this method.
