Tracking someones location from social media messages

Question

I lack knowledge about IP addresses or how the internet works. Let's assume that after I wrote a message to someone on social media, they just felt the need to track me down within a week, is it possible to track location, home address via a message I wrote on social media?

Should I be concerned about it?

Answer 1

It is impossible to make a statement about arbitrary social media sites and arbitrary users trying to track you down. So one can only do some more general statements:

• Can some "normal" user track you down this way - not if you did not provide any helpful personal information about you in the message or profile or if the social media site added such information publicly visible by their own (like the IP from where you accessed)... .
• Can some insider at the social media provider (which includes someone hacking successfully into this provider) track you down - more likely but details depend on what the social media provider stores about you (like history of postings and from where).
• Can law enforcement track you down - also more likely but details depend a lot on what is legal for law enforcement to do and how much access they could get to the social media provider. And of course what the provider stores about you.