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How To Clean Up Incorrect Geolocation Information?
zorro6 writes "I thought this might be an interesting question/topic and it would sure help me to get some kind of answer. I recently got internet service from a small, local wireless ISP in my area (south central Colorado, USA). The strange thing is that many, many web sites think I am in Quebec, Canada when I use the service. Evidently some geolocation service thinks my IP address indicates I am in Canada. I have checked the obvious. The WHOIS information for my IP correctly indicates a location of Durango, CO. So the bad info is coming from some more sophisticated geolocation service. My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French! Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada. So far I know that Yahoo! (or their ad provider), Nvidia, Movielink, etc. all think I am in Canada. I would sure appreciate any help/info on how to get this corrected."
Adult Friend Finder would like to know too
it's silly when they show many hot looking ladies from Morrisville VT (pop. 2000).
but you're going to get a lot more help if you provide your ip address, even if you don't like doing that to the crowd. Or at least let us know what your router's IP address is or some other address in your subnet, since they are probably all the same (wrong).
..." vs "call XXX at 555-1212 and ask for their geo department, problem solved".
Unless you are only interested in knowing the generals of how to fix it yourself, not more in depth examination of your problem (and possibly an immediate solution) This will be the difference between "try this and look that up and see what this is and google for that and
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Download anything and everything. The MPAA will think your in Canada and look for someone else to sue.
Even if you do get the address corrected, it will take years before these companies update their databases and work correctly. About a year ago, the US Post Office changed the zip code in the area that I just moved into, and it has been a hassle left and right.
The electric company claimed they didn't offer service to a house that they were currently providing electricity to. My health insurance was changed to an 'out of area' plan even though my dad already had the right provider in the same zip code. Sears wouldn't deliver until I gave them the old, incorrect zip code. Even Google still has it wrong on some maps, but not others (and I filed the bug months ago, but no fix).
Welcome to another series of problems created by software developers who made bad assumptions.
As you may have been aware, the US economy has been in a rut. I'm not quite sure how "connected" you folks are out there in them sticks of Colorado.. but Bush decided he needed a new war to boost the economy and get cash flowing again.
The Russians weren't interested.. so we picked a fight with neighboring Canada. As is usual with US military operations lately, we failed.
Your part of the country actually IS Canada now dude. Good luck.. better than living in the States.
I agree with this. I've implemented GeoIP on a bunch of sites. Basically, they give you a database linking class A / B / C blocks to certain areas. I don't know where they get this data, but it's what most sites use to determine where you're from. I suggest contacting MaxMind, the maintainers of GeoIP, to correct your information (it's not immediately obvious from their FAQ who you should talk to, but I would start at their contact page). Unfortunately, getting them to make the change may not immediately come into effect on clients' sites... most sites use a static version of the database and update it fairly infrequently (since GeoIP charges for a subscription).
As a side note, I once made an antifraud system on a major unlocked cell phone seller that relied mostly on flagging orders coming from certain countries (using GeoIP) as possible fraud, as well as people who had used the same CC number on more than one account, people who had more than one account in general (using various stats like email address), etc. Seemed to work pretty well for them.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Maybe it was trying to tell you that the closest sexy ladies were 25 miles away :P
(I'm trying really hard to not make Ohio jokes since I live here lol)
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I'm interested to find out how to clean up "incorrect" Geolocation info too.
Increasingly it appears sites are using GeoLocation to route you to a different version of their website, or prevent you from viewing content.
Sometimes it may be useful, such as when Google serving you localised adverts, however when they get it wrong it can becomes a great pain in the arse.
Worse is when sites ban you from viewing content, or just ban you completely, based on your location.
I'm sure some people will rationalise the need for Geolocation for restricting content, but I think it is akin to putting a poster in a public place and then trying to restrict people from viewing it.
Desole, mais je ne comprend pas. S'il vous plait, ecrit en francais.
Merci,
Jean-Guy de Tabernac
My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French!
Ah, you're complaining about the utility of ads that you see on Yahoo...? This must be a first.
Three Squirrels
It is always wrong to blame the user for stale cookies. Cookies are set by the server, not the user, and the server can (and should) update them as necessary.
Besides, that has nothing to do with the problem here, which happens when the web site looks up the IP address in a locator service, and gets wrong information back. The IP address is independent of cookies.
Or perhaps you should just move out of Quebec???
Have your ISP contact Akamai. As an ISP who was also misidentified as "being outside of the USA" by Akamai's geolocation, our customers suffered from the exact same kinds of problems with region protection on network streaming. We didn't get it resolved until we were able to shake the tree properly at Akamai.
AFAIK, Akamai has the most utilized geolocation service out there.
Geolocation services are just large databases that map IP addresses to physical locations. There's really nothing else to it. Who owns a set of IP addreses can also change quite frequently, and so these databases need constant updating.
As an example, here's the FAQ provided by a geolocation service I've used in the past:
GEO I/O compiles several sources of data to achieve 99% accuracy at the country level, 85% at the state/regional level, 80% at the (US) city level (within a 25-mile radius), and 60% accuracy for cities outside of the US. The data is stored in a proprietary format, limiting our ability to make individual changes to it, however the database is updated monthly by our data providers.Basically, it will get fixed when the group maintaining the data updates it, which in my experience can be anywhere from a couple weeks to a year.
There are two widely used geolocation services which should be your starting point:
MaxMinds and IP2Location.
I would contact them and get them to update their records, especially MaxMind, as they are probably the most widely used geolocation service on the Internet.
I hate printers.
Or, a hidden proxy upstream is the problem.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Most of the major Internet companies use Quova (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) for their IP geolocation data (linky. You don't need to have your ISP contact them. Just send an email to support@quova.com with your IP and physical location. They used to provide weekly data updates, so I imagine it is equivalent or more frequent now.
this is all wrong. whois is also used to query the arin database. as the OP stated, this whois information from ARIN is correct.
reverse DNS can not be modified by anyone. only the authoritative nameserver for a region of IP address space (your isp's isp) can delegate that role to another party. this is the essence of the in-addr.arpa domain. most ISPs will not even allow customers with static IP addresses to control the reverse DNS for their addresses.
if you perform reverse dns lookups on the IP addresses appearing near the end of a traceroute you can find useful information for geolocation of the target address. networks generally provide reverse dns for router IP addresses, and those are likely to reveal where the router lives.
Or www.google.com/ncr ... this sets a cookie that prevents further redirects to country-specific sites.
I have the exact opposite problem... plugging my IP address into Maxmind, I get my EXACT town (and it's a small one, believe me). Yet, any other address in my ISPs range just says the capital city of my state. Can I convince Maxmind to like.. you know.. MAKE MY DAMN STATIC IP NOT POINT RIGHT AT ME!? And how'd it get like that in the first place?
Try going to some other country-specific google url, or going to www.google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect).
most ISPs will not even allow customers with static IP addresses to control the reverse DNS for their addresses.
Dunno what you mean by most or control, but for ATT DSL customers, a call to DNS Provisioning and a day's wait is all that's required. For their part, they basically just create a CNAME record and let you take care of the rest. Unless, of course, you choose to have them take of the rest.
No one assumes that those are EXACT, so you're safe.
Honest, Mike. We couldn't find you if we tried.
<knock> <knock>