How to Trace an IP From Yahoo! Messenger Using a Mac

Track chats from Yahoo! Messenger to their original IP addresses.

Yahoo! Messenger routes all of its chat traffic through internal servers at Yahoo!, but that does not mean you cannot figure out the IP address of people you chat with through the messenger. Even using a Mac computer, you can find out the IP addresses of your contacts, using the "netstat" command. Netstat tracks all of the network traffic on your machine back over the Internet to its origins.

Instructions

1. Click the "Finder" option and click the "Applications" menu. Click the "Yahoo! Messenger" icon to launch it. Click on the buddy whose IP address you want to begin a chat.

2. Click your Home folder in the Finder window and navigate to a picture or another file you do not mind sharing. Drag and drop the file into the chat window to initiate a file transfer.

3. Click the "Applications" folder in the Finder window. Click "Utilities" to open that folder and click "Terminal" to launch the terminal shell.

4. Enter "netstat -a" in the terminal shell. Scroll through the output until you see the IP address listed with the YSMG client or Yahoo! Messenger protocol client. It looks something like "173.194.0.xxx:ysmg client." That is the IP address of your open buddy in chat.

References

• Apple Support: Applications, Files and Folders
• Yahoo! Messenger: Transfer Files
• Mac OS X Developer Library: netstat Manual Page

Resources

• Yahoo! Messenger for Mac Download