SkyPing

No third parties - how SkyPing answers everything itself

Most IP checkers send your address to four other services just to show it to you. SkyPing now runs every lookup on its own servers. Here is what changed and what still leaves the house.

Skyfay
October 18, 2026 · 2 min read
PrivacyArchitecturenetd

An IP checker has an odd job: it shows you something every server already knows about you. Yet many of them pass your address on to other services to do it. A geolocation API, a STUN server for the WebRTC test, a map provider for the little pin, sometimes a separate service for the DNS leak test. Each of them sees your IP address, and often the page you came from.

SkyPing did the same until now. Since this release it does not.

What used to leave the page

Before, a visit to the IP lookup triggered requests to a geolocation API over plain HTTP, a second one as a fallback, a public service that returns your IPv4 and IPv6 address, and an embedded map with your approximate coordinates in the URL. The DNS leak test loaded images from a third-party domain, and the WebRTC check asked a public STUN server.

None of that was secret, but none of it was necessary either.

netd, the service behind the site

Every lookup now goes to netd, a small service that runs next to the website on our own server:

  • Geolocation and network come from a local copy of the DB-IP Lite databases. netd downloads the whole file once a month and answers every lookup from memory, so no request ever carries your address.
  • VPN, Tor and data centre detection use lists of address ranges that netd refreshes in bulk, the same way.
  • The DNS leak test has its own nameserver for leak.skyping.ch. How that works is described in its own post.
  • The WebRTC check talks to our own STUN server at stun.skyping.ch.
  • IPv4 and IPv6 are detected through v4.skyping.ch and v6.skyping.ch, two names that each exist for only one protocol.
  • WHOIS asks the responsible registry directly via RDAP, without a proxy in between.

What still goes out

Some things cannot be answered locally, and it is fair to name them:

  • The registry learns which domain you looked up with the WHOIS tool. It does not learn who asked.
  • The reverse DNS name of your address is looked up through a resolver, which sees the address as part of that query.
  • The ping and SSL tools connect to the host you enter, because that is their job.

Check it yourself

The home page lists every host it talked to while it loaded, read straight from your browser's resource timing. You can compare it with the network tab of your developer tools. Everything should end in skyping.ch.

Previous postHow the DNS leak test worksOctober 17, 2026 · 2 min readAll postsBack to the blog2 posts
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