HI,
The first time I saw mine was in a bad chatroom where IPs were shown - what a surprise! Tip: chatrooms are where you can get into a lot of trouble especially for newbies
here is a small comment on that unregistered.
Its not coz of a bad chat room.
It depends on the irc server u are connecting it to.
Some chat servers allow to show ur true ip
when u do a
/whois nick name
While some to protect the privacy of the user ,I will give an example
20*.**2.*2.some_string_garbage
This is not very effective coz doing a smart whois on 20*.**2.*2.* will give u the ip block registeration info from
20*.**2.*2.0-20*.**2.*2.255.
The ip block will usually be registered
to a single enterprise.
How ever this prevents a dos attack on ur ip since only the *st three octects are known.
(For ipv4)
Some irc servers are concerned about ur privacy and will scramble all the 4 octects usually.
Regards Data.