Basically my brother stole £5 from my mum to buy a rank on some Minecraft server then she called the police and they said if anyone goes on Minecraft on the same IP address he would go to jail. So if he uses a VPN called TunnelBear will the police still find out that he was on Minecraft.
Can the police find your IP address if your using a VPN?
Your brother has learned NOTHING has he, and I hope that you aren't following his example. On what planet would a civilized, law abiding person first steal from their mother and then look for ways to avoid getting into trouble with police. One good way for your mother to cope with this is to smash every piece of equipment capable of connecting to the internet and if you have any conscience at all you will tell him not to do it and also rat on him to your mother. And if it is YOU who wants to go onto Minecraft, tough luck, for having a lawbreaking brother.
If it is serious enough they can get a warrant and make the people turn over their server logs and it will tell them who was on there and when. Hoseph above had best learn something before he starts giving out advise on breaking the law. The first answer is a very good one and you had best take it to heart.
They could. They could see that your brother used the IP from a previous time under a certain username, and then they could see that your brother used a different IP under the same username. Your brother already used the IP before stealing the £5 I'm guessing, so the server already has your IP. But honestly, IS 5 POUND Really HARD TO COME BY? C'mon. I'd just tell your brother to come clean and pay your mother the £5. It's something like $7.50 and that's pocket change. I could find that on the sidewalk.
They start at the server where the purchase/theft was made. The site's logs will give them the IP address of the proxy server that was used. The VPN is only between the home computer and the proxy server. The proxy server logs will give them the IP address of the ISP from which the VPN was connected. The ISP's logs will tell them which account was using the particular IP address at the time the incident occurred. The account will identify the house where the connection originated. There the trail goes cold as there are probably no logs in your home router that identifies the particular computer. However, the police could impound all the computers in the house and forensically identify which computer was used and which user on that computer, if there were multiple users accounts, started the incident.
So yes, they can find your IP and they can find the actual computer.
A VPN will keep most of the world from seeing you, but ask the folks on Silk Road how well it works if they really do want to find you.
Nobody is going to go through the time and effort to track down anybody over 5 quid.
Haha £5's not worth it. Your fine. But if it was over £150 yes. You could be tracked down to your ip. Then to your mac address. If your scared change your ip address at like 1-2 am when everyones asleep unplug the black wire from the router and leave it out until 7am or before your parents wake up or anyone else then turn it back on, Might take 5 minutes for it to boot up again and it should be fine but likely with another ip address unless something went wrong.
Keep in mind if you have stolen serious money like 20,000+ they will find you no matter what unless you do complicated **** which I do not want to disclose.
Just try it.
For 5 Pound, the answer is a resounding NO. Even if they could be bothered to trace your IP through and encrypted VPN they are still to PROVE beyond any reasonable doubt whose hands were on the keyboard, when it was done, to make a conviction.
No police officer will take this complaint seriously.
No one is going to investigate 5 pounds, let alone bother to hack an encrypted VPN,
You're safe.