An IP address will not hand over your passwords, but it can give attackers somewhere to aim. In November 2021, Twitch streamer xQc lost his internet connection shortly after playing Crab Game, Engadget reported.
The game developer warned streamers to avoid public lobbies. This came after discovering the game could expose player IP addresses to distributed denial-of-service attacks.
IP addresses route data to and from websites and games. Most home routers let multiple devices share one public IPv4 address, while IPv6 can give each device its own public-facing address.
Neither address type gives someone access to your passwords or personal data. Both can still give a hacker a target to aim at, according to Engadget.
An IP lookup reveals an internet service provider and approximate city or region. In 2016, a Kansas family sued MaxMind after its database mapped roughly 650 million unrelated IP addresses to their farm, bringing repeated law enforcement visits over outside incidents, as Engadget noted.
A typical DDoS attack floods a target with traffic from multiple sources. Bluesky blamed similar attacks for its server outages, and smaller-scale incidents can interrupt gaming sessions, video calls, or household internet connections.
Firewalls offer little help once an internet connection is overwhelmed. To access a device directly, attackers need an entry point like an exposed security camera, vulnerable remote-access software, or a weakly protected home server.
IPv4 port forwarding or permissive IPv6 firewall settings can expose those services. Some IPv6 addresses operate only within local networks, and temporary IPv6 addresses change over time to make tracking harder.
IPv6 can give devices their own public IP addresses, which sounds riskier than it is. A properly configured router firewall still blocks unsolicited connections while allowing responses to traffic initiated from inside the network.
An OpenWrt user on Reddit turned on IPv6 and tested their home server remotely, discovering that remote-access and file-sharing ports were reachable from outside. Their firewall allowed forwarding, and changing that setting to reject closed the opening.