You cannot, with any certainty, trace an IP address to any specific physical location.
It just don’t work that way.
People been watchin’ too much TV.
It’s above my technical expertise - WAY above.
Not with certainty, no, but in this case, I think we can safely assume she wasn’t spoofing her IP address or anything like that. So, if you have the correct IP address, you could trace it to the provider, and the area in which that provider uses that address range, very easily. Beyond that, you would need some specific info that only the ISP has, which isn’t normally publicly available.
Maybe not a “specific” but certainly to a location. As pointed out up-thread, as of current the IP is flagging in the Virgin Islands; I know it was at least a week ago because I was looking into it after a report that GoDaddy was hosting the e-mail services. Turns out, Network Solutions is the registrar and holds the A and MX records which point back to another network provider.
I added a link above. I agree with you by the way. I don’t see how you can geolocate an IP to to an address due to a host of reasons. You can to a country pretty easily.
“You cannot, with any certainty, trace an IP address to any specific physical location.”
I can. Give me your IP address and give me about 30 minutes and I’ll post your home address and a list of the websites you visited this morning. Give me another 30 minutes and I’ll retrieve and decrypt your passwords.
And I’m not even very good at this.
(Memo to a FRiend: NEVER issue this kind of challenge on the Internet.)
You can get pretty close
Maybe 'we' can't (using some internet utility program) but the internet provider can.