ok here is the situation. no one knew where my sister is for 3 days so we were worried and i just got a message from her through yahoo messenger but she just says she is ok and can't say where she is. i did netstat and this is what i get for what i assume is the connection to her.

tcp 0 0 192.168.0.2:50425 cs42.msg.dcn.yahoo.com:5050 ESTABLISHED

im not too sure what that means. That ip is in the local address column. i don't know what command i can use or how to use this information to find out what ip address she is using. I figure i can find out her ip and find out the provider and hopefully the general area they cater to. I want to know if she is still in the same state or not - she has everyone back home on edge. I know some of you may not want to respond because im sure i can't get the address through legal means so i appreciate any replies.

I don't know what Yahoo calls it but you will need to make a direct connection to her chat client. Like you would to send a image or something like that. Then do the netstat, otherwise it will only report the connection to the Yahoo server.

However with a IP address you are only going to be able to find out what ISP, and maybe a general location. Without court order, or unless you know someone who works for the ISP that is willing to help, you will will not be able to find her exact location.

cs42.msg.dcn.yahoo.com:5050

so that is showing the connection to the chat server? The police are involved so if i could give them the ip address they may be able to contact the ISP themselves or even if i just got general state that would be helpful because we contacted the police for the area she lives in but if she isn't in that state anymore it wouldn't be that helpful.

That server acts as a proxy between your communications, so you will not be able to get the IP on the other end unless there is a direct connection with the two clients.

If Yahoo's client is not able to do that, do you have a website? If so you could post a image, then link her to it, and look in your access logs for the IP.

i don't have a site but i assume i could set up something real quick with geocites and upload an image? I would be able to access logs for it? thanks for all the help by the way.

last I remember, geocities didn't let you access any kind of log like that. Maybe if you had the upgraded pkg, but as far as the basic(free) account, it only tells you type of machine and what type browser.