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.