A one-to-one voice or video call can expose your public IP address to the other person's device before either of you says a word. The address arrives with the traffic, so anyone who can capture packets on the receiving end can read it. Call encryption can hide the audio while the network address stays visible.
An IP lookup won't find your street address, and it often misses your city too. MaxMind puts typical city accuracy at 20 to 75 percent and says country accuracy generally exceeds 99 percent when VPN use is excluded. A lookup estimates the network's location, which may differ from yours.
WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram each have a relay setting. With a relay, the other caller sees a relay server's address instead of yours. The company running that server still sees your address.
MaxMind IP location limits, WebRTC address privacy
What a call packet shows
On a direct call, the other device can read the source address in incoming packets without decrypting the audio. It may see your public address or the address of a VPN server. A browser may also exchange private addresses while it sets up the call.
A VPN can hide your home connection's public IP address when call setup and audio stay on the VPN. The IETF's WebRTC rules say a browser must not try every network connection unless you give permission. Until you give that permission, the browser should use the route that your device normally uses for web traffic. This doesn't guarantee that WebRTC will follow a proxy set only inside your browser.
Giving microphone access may grant a browser permission to use connections outside the VPN. WebRTC may then try every route that your machine can use to reach the network. It can share the addresses for those routes during call setup even if the audio later uses the VPN. An in-app relay avoids a direct connection between the two callers.
The recreated Wireshark screenshot below shows one WebRTC call in a browser as an example. Other calling systems may label their traffic differently. The screenshot uses addresses reserved for documentation, so it contains no real person's data.
The screenshot uses the stun || dtls display filter and shows connection checks and call setup rather than audio packets. Apps can add server traffic to a capture, so an unexplained address isn't proof that the address belongs to the other caller.
On equipment you own, Wireshark's Conversations table can group the addresses that exchanged UDP or TCP traffic during a call. Finding an address that you recognize proves only that your device exchanged traffic with that address, not that the connection carried the audio. A missing address doesn't prove that the app hid it.
Turn on the relay
WhatsApp documents its mobile menu path. The Telegram path below applies to Android only. The app labels were checked against the linked sources on September 7, 2026.
On WhatsApp, open Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Protect IP address in calls. On Signal, open Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Always relay calls. On iPhone, Signal capitalizes that label as Always Relay Calls.
On Telegram for Android, open Settings > Privacy and Security > Calls and tap the Use Peer-to-Peer with option under Peer-to-Peer. Choose Nobody, remove any Always Allow exceptions, then tap the checkmark to save.
Apps should put this privacy choice beside the call button, not several settings pages deep.
WhatsApp says group calls are relayed through its servers by default. All three apps warn that relaying can reduce call quality. For a private call, confirm the relay setting before you answer or dial.
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