[Geowanking] IP geolocation

[Mike Liebhold]

James Muir wrote:

> Do you have a url for the "findme" ip geolocation utility you tried?  

http://local.live.com/

My home IP address is officially registerd to a proxy server in San 
Diego. I'm connected via satellite behind the proxy from a very remote 
location in northern California, and yet the findme utility properly 
identified my actual geographic position. The satellite service provider 
has -not- revealed my actual address. ( I checked with friends in their 
net ops center.) The data for local.live.com was purchased from a 
commercial ip geolocation service who determined my actual,  rural 
location using undisclosed mechanisms.

> I am extremely suspicious that there is a robust method for extracting 
> IP addresses from behind a proxy.  Assuming that your proxy isn't 
> advertising your IP address in an HTTP header (e.g. X-Forwarded-For), 
> then they probably got your IP using Java.  If you disable Java, then 
> your IP should remain hidden.
>
> -James
>
> Mike Liebhold wrote:
>
>> Most of the big commercial IP geolocation providers, like quova also 
>> have robust  and improving capablities to mine ip geolocations for 
>> addresses that might be behind a proxy.  I know from personal 
>> experience from behind a proxy a thousand miles away from my 
>> registered address, when I used the findme ip geolocation utility on 
>> a high profile web mapping site.
>>
>> The International Herald Tribune has an astounding and chilling quote 
>> here from Madam Hu Qiheng, chair of the Internet Society of China, 
>> regarding China's impending wide scale adoption of IPv6,  and  plans 
>> for more traceable individual IP adresses:
>> http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/19/business/chinet20.php
>>
>> "  The standard, known as IPv6, solves technical problems faced by 
>> the Internet around the world, but Internet freedom advocates outside 
>> China warn that the internationally developed norm would also allow 
>> Beijing authorities - or any government or company for that matter - 
>> to have a better idea of what individuals are doing on the Internet.
>>  
>> "There is now anonymity for criminals on the Internet in China," said 
>> Hu Qiheng, chair of the Internet Society of China, a public-private 
>> group founded five years ago to promote the Internet in China. "With 
>> the China Next Generation Internet project, we will give everyone a 
>> unique identity on the Internet."
>> [snip]
>> "It may not be popular everywhere to say this, but I think it is 
>> important for the government to monitor and police the Internet," Hu 
>> said. "Bad things now happen on the Internet, and we want to stop that."
>>  
>> Fighting Internet crime, which Hu defined broadly to include acts 
>> counter to the interests of the Chinese government, requires a more 
>> certain way of identifying people online, she said.
>>  
>> The IPv6 standard, Hu said, offered the best mechanism for 
>> establishing the identity of users online. "
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Geowanking mailing list
> Geowanking at lists.burri.to
> http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
>
>