Another Digital Scam Tactic

I had a call from my little sister today, and she was asking me for money to buy IP address. I was in a very important meeting so I didn’t even really pay attention and then told her “okay, take it from my “. But before I could say where she should take the money from, I asked her to repeat what she said because I was so sure I heard IP address and money.

So it happened that, there was this boy in their class taking money from them to get them IP addresses. She said ever since they came home for vacation, their internet have been really slow so a boy from their class said they needed to buy IP addresses. I asked her if she knew what IP address was and she said no. I then processed to ask her that if she didn’t know what it was, why why would she even want to buy it. But well, little Miss wasn’t ready to listen, she just wanted her internet back and faster.

Before I tell you what happened, let me just say that, IP is simply an acronym for Internet Protocol and IP address is the address given to every device that connects to the internet. So in simple terms, any device which has access to the internet or connects to the internet automatically has an IP address.

Another thing about IP addresses is that, they can be tracked by individuals or companies, and that’s why after browsing the internet to look for room decor, you suddenly see ads about all kinds of stuff for room decoration. That is why after searching on google “best tools for editing”, you see a lot of pop up ads about so many editing apps.

For me, my IP address is mostly hidden except I mistakenly someway somehow make it accessible. I hide it mainly because I just don’t like companies tracking my activities and also to avoid putting my physical location out there. I’ve experienced a scary situation where someone tracked me all the way to wherever I was just to surprise me. And in as much as he thought it was nice, it was very scary for me because he wasn’t even my friend.

Anyway, if you want to hide your IP address, go to your phone’s settings, and then choose whatever app you use to browse, mine is safari. After that, just scroll down to advanced and at the privacy section, choose advanced tracking and turn it off. Oh this is for iOS and I’m not really sure how it works on android.

So as I was saying in the beginning, I had to explain to my little sister what IP address was just like I’ve done above, and then she was so angry that her own friend was going to take money from her to buy her an IP address. I’m just glad she came to me first. This makes me wonder the number of people who paid the boy to buy them IP addresses.