I was chatting with someone on a random video-chat site when they posted what appeared to be my public IP address and threatened to knock my internet offline with a DDoS attack. The location associated with it was a nearby city, which made me nervous, so I disconnected my router for about an hour. Should I treat this as a real threat, and what steps should I take?
4 Answers
A router working harder or its fans speeding up does not prove a DDoS attack; it could be normal heat or network activity. If it stays unusually hot, repeatedly disconnects, or behaves strangely, have the adult who manages the connection check the equipment and contact the ISP. Keep the router’s firmware updated and make sure remote administration and unnecessary port forwarding are disabled.
Seeing your public IP is not automatically a security breach. Websites, apps, and peer-to-peer services can see it as part of making a connection. An IP usually identifies your ISP and an approximate area, not your exact home address. Most threats like this are meant to scare people, and an IP alone normally does not let someone access devices behind a properly configured home router.
The city shown by an IP lookup is generally the ISP’s registered location or a nearby service hub, so it is not reliable proof that the person knows where you live. Avoid continuing the conversation, save screenshots if the threats continue, and report the account or site. Use a reputable VPN if you want to reduce IP exposure on services that connect users directly, and avoid unfamiliar peer-to-peer chat sites.
Some chat services connect users directly, which can expose each participant’s public IP. If someone actually floods your connection, restart the modem and router, then contact your ISP and ask whether they can assign a new public IP or investigate the outage. Turning off Wi-Fi alone may not change the public address, and an IP release or renewal on a computer usually only affects the local network.
I plugged everything back in and the connection is working normally, so I’m feeling less concerned now.
That helps. I was especially worried because I had a bad experience years ago where my internet went down after someone made a similar threat.