In Google Drive, you can right-click on the file and choose “shareable link.” In Dropbox, hover your mouse over the file and select share. With your file uploaded, use the website to create a shareable link. You may want to create a second “throwaway” account if you don’t already have one. If you suspect the person you’re interacting with isn’t trustworthy and you don’t want to give any personal information away, it’s a good idea not to use any main account you have. The first step is to upload your file to a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.
You can use a link to any web page online, but this process will guide you through creating a link that goes to one of your files or photos.
Track ip address with link how to#
RELATED: Scam Alert: Fake Job Recruiters Tried to Catfish Us, Here’s What Happened How to Create a Disguised Tracking Link You probably don’t want the other person to spot your trick. You’ll need to use another service to hide that. Unfortunately, that process creates a link that’s obviously for tracking. Once you’re ready to send a file, you’ll need to wrap that normal link with an IP tracking service. If you’re dating online, you might want to send a photo. If you’re dealing with a possible scammer, that scammer might ask you to send them something as part of a scam. A picture, a Word document, or anything you can attach to a cloud storage link will do. Once you do, you’ll need to prepare a digital file to send them. Working that into conversation shouldn’t be too tricky, the nature of the internet makes asking for location a routine part of an online discussion-does anyone else remember A/S/L? If you don’t already know the location someone claims to be from and are just trying to figure out whether they’re genuine, you’ll need to convince the person to say where they are before sending them the link. In the case of our fake job recruiter, the scammer claimed to be in the US, but they accessed our link from an IP address based in Nigeria. But, even if they are, there’s a good chance the VPN will show a different location from where they claim to be. Anyone can use a VPN to mask their real location. The method here uses an online service that “wraps” a real link for you, tracking the IP address that accesses it before quickly sending the person to the real target of the link. But popular web services don’t usually show you the IP address of that person, although you could certainly see it yourself if you were hosting your own web server. And IP addresses are tied to rough geographic areas. There’s nothing special about this-when someone accesses a resource online, the server sees their unique IP address. They said they were in the US-but were they? We checked by tracking their IP with a link. We knew at the start this was a scam, but we wanted to confirm the scammer’s location. We recently played along with a fake job recruiter scam. How IP Tracking Links Work Wait a minute: They said they were in the US, but this says Nigeria!