IP mapping: not as accurate as you may think

[zartagen]

How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

As any geography nerd knows, the precise center of the United States is in northern Kansas, near the Nebraska border. Technically, the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the center spot are 39°50′N 98°35′W. In digital maps, that number is an ugly one: 39.8333333,-98.585522. So back in 2002, when MaxMind was first choosing the default point on its digital map for the center of the U.S., it decided to clean up the measurements and go with a simpler, nearby latitude and longitude: 38°N 97°W or 38.0000,-97.0000.

As a result, for the last 14 years, every time MaxMind’s database has been queried about the location of an IP address in the United States it can’t identify, it has spit out the default location of a spot two hours away from the geographic center of the country. This happens a lot: 5,000 companies rely on MaxMind’s IP mapping information, and in all, there are now over 600 million IP addresses associated with that default coordinate. If any of those IP addresses are used by a scammer, or a computer thief, or a suicidal person contacting a help line, MaxMind’s database places them at the same spot: 38.0000,-97.0000.

Which happens to be in the front yard of Joyce Taylor’s house.

[frorider]

When law enforcement agents asked companies like Google and Facebook for the IP addresses used by suspected criminals and then mapped them using tools like this that relied on the MaxMind database, it pointed at the Taylor house. Amateur sleuths who spotted IP addresses used by visitors to their websites or on message forums were so convinced that the Taylor house was the source of their various problems that they created reports about it on Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, the Ripoff Report...

I found it odd that the radio version of this story left out this one crucial part of the explanation.

[Snow Dog]

It's all technology artifacts. In the early days of digital maps unknown features (e.g. lakes) were marked in the middle BC. At least I figured it out and didn't drive there.

whatismyipaddress.com shows the right town but is nowhere near my house. It's probably showing the local network node for my ISP.

[Tippster]

whatismyipaddress.com shows the right town but is nowhere near my house. It's probably showing the local network node for my ISP.

Huh. Mine is spot on.

[iceman]

Mine's wrong by ~3 miles

[Dantheman]

Mine puts me in the middle of a wilderness area in BCC. That is seriously shitty for Mrs. Taylor, et al.

[mall walker]

use http://ifconfig.me/ and no you can't get reliable geo information out of it. also you can completely obviate what vaguely useful location data you can get by just using a proxy, of which there are oodles available free/paid that anyone can figure out...

[Bromontana]

Mine puts me in the middle of a wilderness area in BCC. That is seriously shitty for Mrs. Taylor, et al.

Ditto. I've used it before to trace the sender of an email within a block or two though. Something you need a secondary point of reference to validate with the way IPs go through digital infrastructure.