Oh yeah, that’s the new hexadecimal IPV8
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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IPv5.
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.
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.
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IPv4 was easy to remember. IPv6 made it very hard. This implies that IPv8 has to be base64 encoded.
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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
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?
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That's not the probability they are looking for.
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.
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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
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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!
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.
This is just an IPv5, they're quite rare in the wild
For the uninitiated, the joke is:
spoiler
Each number should has a maximum value of 255.
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New address space unlocked
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
Alternatively, the scammer is saving themselves some time; more educated, well-versed people will see the ip and not bother calling in. Less savvy people who don't know the IP address is bogus are likely easier to scam if they call the phone number or reply to the mail.
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That's exactly the reaction they want. That aspect of the scam helps filter out people who might be smart enough to properly retaliate if they were to get scammed out of 20k or whatever.
Jesus Christ, that’s Jason Bourne’s IP address!
no shit they don't recognize that IP :-D but hey, they also single handedly solved the IP4 address space crisis!
Please, do not share the button. It's gross.
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
They just wanted to make doubly sure that whoever they are phishing is an idiot before they proceed further.
Spain has better food, better beaches, hotter women, better fiesta, better weather, better lifestyle, better IP's.
Deal with it.
I was surprised to find that this doesn’t work at all.
For instance, 300 is considered a valid IP by e.g. Firefox, typing 300/ into Firefox will navigate to http://0.0.1.44/.
I was expecting this to be interpreted as just Σ 256ⁿ × dₙ mod 256⁴. But it isn’t, Firefox won’t accept this (it performs a web search instead). Neither will curl (which tries to look up a domain by this name).
Your first mistake is sharing this email with everyone here
I think I see why the login attempt was unsuccessful!
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