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In this second article of my Do your Research series I’m going to explain how to obtain an IP address and go over some of the information you can get once you have the IP address.

#1. The first thing we need to do is acquire the IP address. To do this we’re going to ping the domain of the website. I’ll go step-by-step using HYIPBlogger.com as an example.

The easiest way to get an IP is to ping the website. Without getting into a lot of detail, pinging another computer is the action of sending a small packet of information to the host computer and recording the travel time. We’re actually ignoring this and utilizing the ping as a way to get the IP address of the website we’re researching.

I find the easiest way to ping a computer is to open up the Command Prompt. If you’re using XP Go to the Start menu, click All Programs and it’s located in the Accessories folder, on Windows 7 Open the Start Menu then type “cmd” in the Start Menu search box and press Enter. I actually don’t know how to on any other operating systems, so if you’re not running on a Windows system skip down a couple paragraphs to the alternative method.

Once you have the command prompt open, type “cd..” twice to get to the root directory (so only C:> is showing like below). Then type, “ping” followed by the website you’re researching.

Resulting with…

As you can see in the above screenshot you’ll see the IP address of HYIPBlogger.com is 208.64.126.23.

As an alternative if you can’t use the Ping command from your own computer because of a firewall or other restriction, or want to do an internet ping from a location other than your own you do it from DomainTools.com. Just type the URL of the website in the small “tools” bar on the right and click go.

Now that we have the IP address I bet you’re wondering what to do with it. I suggest you go to IP2Location.com. IP2Location™ is a great tool that gives you a lot of good information from an IP address in a quick and easy format.

Just type the IP address you acquired by pinging the domain into the search box and click Find Location. Below is what comes up when you plug in HYIPBlogger.com’s IP address:

Now, you have some information about the HYIP that you didn’t previously know. First, IP2Location™ lists location information, specifically the Country, Region, City, Latitude/Longitude and Zip Code of the IP address.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Not all of information may be filled in depending on the IP’s country
• The location listed is the location of the server, NOT of the HYIP admin

You’re also given the internet service provider, local weather station and a few other items that aren’t really useful for our application.

IP2Location.com allows a maximum of 20 free look-ups a day which is usually enough for daily HYIP research. However, if you find that you want this information for large numbers of IP searches, they offers a variety of different products for purchase to help with your information finding.

Now, you’re probably wondering how the above information tells you if the HYIP is a scam. The truth is it doesn’t, but this tool CAN help you in your decision to invest by helping you confirm information given to you by the admin or website of a program. If for example the admin states they are hosted on a Staminus server, you can check on the IP2Location™ tool and confirm this information.

Unfortunately some hosting providers don’t own their own servers, or their companies work under different names than they advertise and sell under. For example, programs hosted by DDoSWIZ often show their ISP as being Staminus Communications. Therefore, it’s important to not discredit what a program’s website says based solely on what the IP2Location™ tool displays. That is why I usually use this tool as a way to confirm information instead of a way to discredit it.

In fact, In a future article I’m going to list the company names displayed by the IP2Location™ tool for the most popular hosting companies in our industry. I believe having the information to cross-reference (especially if the name on the tool is different from the host) will be useful to everyone.

Well, I hope the above walkthrough helps everyone out. Hopefully I’ve even given you veterans of HYIP investing a bit of new information you can utilize. As always if you have any questions or comments, post away!

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