Using RIR info to determine geographic location...

Fri Dec 21 03:17:36 UTC 2007

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:13:17 +0000
Greg Skinner <gds at best.com> wrote:

> 
> Personally, I have trouble accepting some of the claims the
> geotargeting companies have made, such as Quova's 99.9% to the country
> level, and 95% to the US state level.  ( More info at
> http://www.quova.com/page.php?id=132 ) Perhaps I'm just part of the
> outlying data; using the "three top search engines" I rarely see them
> get the city correct (ie. where *I* am physically located, as opposed
> to where the registration data says the block is located), and have
> seen some glaring errors for the country in some cases.
> 
> Geotargeting has turned into quite a business, and I'm concerned that
> people who rely on these services do not fully understand the risks.
> 
Some folks are relying on it for serious purposes.  Many Internet
gambling sites use it to avoid serving US customers, for example.
Their risk is criminal liability for the executive -- the have a
strong incentive to get reliable data...  Some sports media sites use it
to enforce local area blackouts; though that doesn't need to be
perfect, if it's too imperfect they risk breach of contract and
expensive lawsuits.

For the advertisers, best effort is probably good enough...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb