Took me a second to figure out what was wrong with the email... I choked on a laugh when I saw the IP
What a bizarre, narrow window of knowledge that person must have
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Ok I admit I didn't get it at first because I expected the joke to be that the IP is 127.0.0.1 and didn't look closer at the digits
no shit they don't recognize that IP :-D but hey, they also single handedly solved the IP4 address space crisis!
New address space unlocked
It's not often you see IPv5
It's good to see someone in this thread who knows what an IPv5 address looks like:
IPv5 addresses consist of four hextets a 16bit each. For the visual
representation, those grouping are used. The hextets might be
written in decimal, separated by dot '.' characters, or as
hexadecimal numbers, separated by colon ':'.
It's long past time to start replacing our IPv4.1 deployments!
For the uninitiated, the joke is:
spoiler
Each number should has a maximum value of 255.
The fact that I have a test in school today, and this is probable questiom in it, and this post reminded me of it, thanks I guess?
EDIT: wait, so each number should be maximum of 255? Why did I think it was just the last numbe :|
anyway thanks again for the unsolicited coincidental heads up
In addition to what others have already posted, I suspect that this might be an attempt to evade spam/phishing filters that are looking for an IP address with a specific regular expression. Having a fake IP address that doesn’t match the traditional ^((25\[0-5]|(2\[0-4]|1\d|\[1-9]|)\d)\\.?\b){4}$ format might let this message slip through.
And it hooks tech illiterate people, avoiding people who know something's wrong. The perfect target.
Sorry, that's my IP. I was trying something
(theft)
I often assume this kind of thing is part of an effort to filter for idiots
If you know that's an invalid IP address, you're probably less likely to fall for the scam after the scammer has put the setup work in. So if they filter you out before a scammer has to spend any actual effort on you, that means more time they can spend scamming people who might be more likely to fall for it
That's why these things often have egregious spelling errors and other seemingly obvious red flags
I never thought of it like that before. I wonder how common this intent actually is...
Just because I know what a valid IP is doesn't mean I'm not an idiot 😎
Let's see you write a regex for one, then we'll decide.
Why would anyone want to do that when there are dozens on stackoverflow?
That's not the probability they are looking for.
I do believe that is confirmed canon.
It's possible in general, but I don't think that's what's going on specifically here; not many people read IP addresses in such detail to notice such things at first glance.
It’s exactly what is happening, they’re filtering out people who know what an IP address is and can contain so that they get fewer time wasters.
The point schnurrito was making is that even if you know what an IP address is and what are valid or invalid IP addresses, a lot of people won't read the IP address. They'll just see numbers and skim over them. Even if you're keeping eyes peeled for scams, most people don't have their IP address memorised off the top of their heads so they wouldn't be looking to check if the IP address looks right or not.
And the point I’m making is that they’re doing it to filter out people who know and pay attention. Real simple stuff.
Then I don't think that would be the most effective way because most people aren't paying that much attention, independently of knowledge. What would tip me off to it being a scam would be other parts of the email.
You, maybe, someone else, maybe not.
They put in a lot of flags like that, of varying obviousness, to filter out as many people as possible who would be savvy enough to not fall for the scam overall. It’s not just one clue, it never is.
Movies and TV shows actually do it this way to prevent actual machines getting group hugged.
Like in that one X-Files episode, where the Lone Gunmen hack into an invalid IP.
It's also why there's usually bad spelling or grammar in those e-mails as well
Oh yeah, that’s the new hexadecimal IPV8
IPv5.
IPv4 was easy to remember. IPv6 made it very hard. This implies that IPv8 has to be base64 encoded.
Hello, I am apparently an idiot. What is wrong with that IP address that people can tell it's an immediate phishing scam?
IP addresses can't have segment numbers going over 255.
Yeah, IPv4 addresses use four bytes. Those four bytes are represented as four decimal numbers, separated by dots. And a byte can only represent the decimal values 0–255.
I think you mean IPV0x08
I try to avoid "this" style comments, but I genuinely don't know how else to respond to this one. It was hilarious. I literally (by which I actually mean "literally") laughed out loud.
wait what? I feel like I am left behind in the tech. I only know about ipv4 and ipv6 😭😭😭
They’re making a joke. The numbers in the IP are way too high for v4, but the format isn’t v6, so it’s a “new range” of v8.
Where's IPv7?
In the drawer right next to IPv5
at 192.512.512.10.0/42.
86.75.30.9
Neither 867:5309:: nor 867::5309 appears to be allocated. Do IPv6 blocks work like car license plates where you can pay more to get a vanity plate of your choice or do you just get what you get?
That cancer support line should buy this one also
Jesus Christ, that’s Jason Bourne’s IP address!
Please, do not share the button. It's gross.
Your first mistake is sharing this email with everyone here
I'm more surprised that it's a normal UA instead of something like AppleWebkit/Gecko/ChromeSafari 547.0
Probably outer space