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CodeLong888
CodeLong888

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Check your IP, ASN, and VPN/proxy leaks from the terminal with curl (no signup, no key)

#bash #linux #devops #privacy

Every "what's my IP" site is a bloated page covered in ads, cookie banners, and "sign up for a VPN" popups. Half the time I just want the number, and often I want it inside a shell script or over SSH, where a browser is not even an option.

So here is the no-nonsense version: hackmyip.com serves clean text and JSON when you hit it with curl. No signup, no API key, no HTML.

The basics 

# IP + location + network, human-readable
curl hackmyip.com

# just the raw IP (pipe-friendly)
curl hackmyip.com/ip
# 203.0.113.45
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Because /ip returns nothing but the address, it drops straight into scripts:

IP=$(curl -s hackmyip.com/ip)
echo "running from $IP"
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JSON when you need to parse it 

curl hackmyip.com/json
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{
  "ip": "203.0.113.45",
  "city": "Amsterdam",
  "country": "NL",
  "asn": "AS64500",
  "org": "Example Telecom B.V."
}
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Pipe it into jq like anything else:

curl -s hackmyip.com/json | jq -r .asn
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The useful one: is my VPN actually working?

This is the endpoint I reach for most. It tells you whether your current IP looks like a normal residential connection or a datacenter / VPN / proxy:

curl hackmyip.com/proxy
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proxy: yes
type:  datacenter/hosting
network: AS212238  Datacamp Limited
signal: IP is on a known datacenter/hosting ASN
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Why this is handy: turn your VPN on, then run curl hackmyip.com/proxy. If it still shows your real residential ISP and ASN, your VPN is not actually routing that traffic (a leak). If it shows a datacenter ASN like above, the VPN is doing its job. It is a one-second sanity check you can even drop into a script before doing anything sensitive.

The rest of the toolkit 

curl hackmyip.com/asn       # your ASN + ISP
curl hackmyip.com/headers   # the request headers the server sees
curl hackmyip.com/ua        # your User-Agent
curl hackmyip.com/rdns      # reverse DNS (PTR) of your IP
curl hackmyip.com/help      # the full menu
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All of it is free, keyless, and runs on Cloudflare's edge, so it is fast from anywhere. If you would rather hit a full JSON API (DNS, WHOIS, blacklist, breach checks, and more), the no-key API is documented at https://hackmyip.com/api-docs.

What do you use for this in your scripts? Curious whether people are still hardcoding ifconfig.me or have a sharper trick.

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