internet probe can track you within 690 m

Mon Apr 11 20:10:13 UTC 2011

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20336-internet-probe-can-track-you-down-to-within-690-metres.html
"The new method zooms in through three stages to locate a target 
computer. The first stage measures the time it takes to send a data 
packet to the target and converts it into a distance – a common 
geolocation technique that narrows the target's possible location to a 
radius of around 200 kilometres.
(..)
Finally, they repeat the landmark search at this more fine-grained 
level: comparing delay times once more, they establish which landmark 
server is closest to the target. The result can never be entirely 
accurate, but it's much better than trying to determine a location by 
converting the initial delay into a distance or the next best IP-based 
method. On average their method gets to within 690 metres of the target 
and can be as close as 100 metres – good enough to identify the target 
computer's location to within a few streets."

It seems to me to be a rather flaky way of finding out your estimated 
location. But I guess it could be helpful when the objective is just to 
create some global database of demographics for marketing and privacy 
invasion purposes, where specifics of an individual's exact location 
don't really matter.

Besides the latter can always be subpoenaed. ;-)

One more reason to use VPN and other such techniques to hide your location.

Greetings,
Jeroen

-- 
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html