Guide

See what every website knows about you, and check if your VPN works

Published 23 October 2026

A dark Windows PowerShell window showing the IP address, city and internet company returned by ipinfo.io

Short answerRun curl.exe ipinfo.io to see your public IP address, approximate city and internet company, which every website can see. Run it again with your VPN on; if the city and company stay the same, the VPN is not hiding you.

You don't need cookies to be located. Every website you open gets your public IP address, and from it a good guess of your city and your internet company. One line shows you exactly what they see.

Step 1: See what websites see

Windows has curl built in. In PowerShell, type curl.exe (with .exe):

PowerShell

curl.exe ipinfo.io

Example output

{
  "ip": "203.0.113.47",
  "city": "Your City",
  "region": "Your State",
  "country": "IN",
  "org": "AS64500 Your Internet Company",
  "timezone": "Asia/Kolkata"
}

The location is a guess from your IP address. It is usually right to the city, rarely to your street.

Step 2: Check your VPN

Switch your VPN on and run the same line again.

Example output with VPN

  "ip": "198.51.100.23",
  "city": "Amsterdam",
  "org": "AS64501 Some VPN Hosting",

City and company changed: the VPN is hiding your IP.
Still your city and your internet company: the VPN isn't working for this connection. Reconnect it, or check its "kill switch" setting.

Just one value

Add the field name to the address:

PowerShell

curl.exe ipinfo.io/ip
curl.exe ipinfo.io/city
curl.exe ipinfo.io/org

Why curl.exe and not curl?

In Windows PowerShell 5, curl is a shortcut for a different command (Invoke-WebRequest) that prints a lot of extra text. curl.exe runs the real curl.