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Ask Slashdot: Getting Around Terrible Geolocation?
First time accepted submitter AvitarX writes W3C has the IP address where I work as showing up in Ireland (we are in the USA). This is a nuisance for a lot of reasons (many dates now display in European format, prices are listed in euros, search results redirect to google.ie). Some of these issues can be worked around, but it's frustrating. I have searched as best as I can, and only can find information on the geolocation API in HTML5. The office is on a static IP address from Comcast. When I visit whatismyipaddress.com all info is correct except for W3C's result. I have submitted that it is inaccurate; is there anything else I can do? Googling, I have only managed to find usage examples for web developers/designers.
First one was not being able to deliver e-mail, now Comcast has someone else in the wrong country. Is it a bad day to work for Comcast?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
You can't pick where the geolocation service says you are, yet it is used for everything including content delivery and advertisements.
...with a proxy run on some other place, like people do to get access to US only content and such. But that is generally a hassle.
Nice pun in the title. Almost didn't catch it.
Table-ized A.I.
You could subscribe to a VPN or Proxy service that is based in the U.S. Bit galling to (I assume) pay for a service to fix the issue of course.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Hi,
I own https://wonderproxy.com/ and the primary thing we sell our customers is "a server where we say it is so you can test your localization", and we have problems _all the time_. So I've been where you are, with the added bonus of having customers yelling at me because Google thinks my Madrid server is in France.
There's no real good options here, different people use different databases of different ages with different procedures to update (if they have one at all). MaxMind (http://maxmind.com) is pretty good at updates, as are most of the free options (like ip2location http://www.ip2location.com/). Google (which powers a lot of ads, and their own country redirect) has a form (https://support.google.com/websearch/contact/ip) which seems to pipe directly into /dev/null.
Most GeoIP providers want to handle things in large blocks, not one IP at a time. If you can convince your ISP (generally by pointing them at a few forms) to send in corrections they'll be able to correct their entire IP space all at once, which may be handled faster, or at least cover you now and next time your IP changes. Once these are submitted expect a delay of 2weeks -> before anything starts to get better.
Beyond trying to correct people, buying a cheap server from Linode and VPNing through should be a decent work around. If you set up an OpenVPN server, several routers are capable of connecting and routing all their data through them automatically, so you wont need to configure each device individually. Linode is a decent option as their servers are fast, stable, and you'll effectively only pay for half your symmetric bandwidth as inbound is free.
good luck :(
paul reinheimer
Is this the same W3C that is responsible for HTML standards and reminding me how bad I am at proper syntax?
I didn't even know W3C did geolocation (like Maxmind). Is there any chance you're talking about a page that uses the W3C geolocation API? That is, you're talking about what result some Javascript gets when it asks your web browser "where am I?"
If I'm not mistaken and that's what you're talking about, then look up how your browser gets its location.
If I'm mistaken and W3C actually has a ip-to-geo thing, oops, never mind. No idea what you're going to do about their database being wrong.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Stop visiting crappy pages where you can't select your language or currency and where the content is filtered depending on where you are.
Yes. Just abandon the internet entirely.
Geolocation needs to die. Every site that uses it assumes that my location is a perfect indicator of my language preferences. Real helpful to have all websites in a language I don't understand whenever I'm traveling through Eastern Europe or Asia.
I sure wish someone had thought of a standardized way for people to automatically let websites know their language preferences. Oh wait, that already exists.
like hola.org
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Tell your company to stop using Ireland as a tax haven.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Well, this explains why I had trouble searching.
W3C is listed as a seperate provider in tables, here: http://whatismyipaddress.com/l... (note, they chopped the direct link in my original post), and here: http://whatismyipaddress.com/g...
Note, in the first link, everything except W3C is listed as correct, which is even more baffling for me, because somewhere the wrong information is being received, and it happened everywhere in the shop at once, across platforms.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
One of my customers is located in Southern California, but Sun's (now Oracle's) servers refused to give them Java updates because they were geolocated as being in Iran.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
If not, you just stay right where you are . . . tovarishch.
Short Answer:
Signup for a VPN or Proxy service with an exit point in the region you want.
Longer Answer:
IP-based geography detection (GeoIP for short) depends on the databases and services that various providers are leveraging. It's inherently inaccurate. Good luck getting these fixed as there are a bunch of different services (including the W3C) that you would need to get updated. Are you sure your routing exit point isn't actually in Ireland? My company's IP address maps to an exit point in San Francisco, even though I'm located in Los Angeles.
HTML5 location detection is pretty accurate, insofar as it relies on your browser to tell the site/service where you are. You should be able to force that setting in your browser.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Google thought my entire office was located in Mexico a couple months ago, so all my Google services were in Spanish. The situation seemed to resolve itself just as mysteriously as it started. I was speculating that someone was doing a BGP attack to reroute our usual traffic through Mexico so they could phish all our passwords or something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Your browser supplies HTML5 Geolocation. But it sounds like the submitter is having problems with GeoIP detection. That's a server-side issue and relies on subscription databases for identifying where physically on the globe an IP might map to. It's also horribly inaccurate as the submitter has found.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Yes. Just abandon the internet entirely.
In five years the "I gave up cable TV ... and my life is so great" meme that appears in /. every time a discussion even touches on how bad cable TV providers are will have morphed into "I gave up the internet ... and my life is so great".
Yes, you can subscribe to my newsletter.
and learn to like Guinness.
Note, in the first link, everything except W3C is listed as correct, which is even more baffling for me, because somewhere the wrong information is being received, and it happened everywhere in the shop at once, across platforms.
You've got it all wrong as to where the problem lies.
First, there are two ways being used to calculate your geolocation. One of them uses online providers who have databases mapping IP addresses to locations. This is what you're seeing in the "Provider X" columns, which you state are indeed showing your correct location.
W3C doesn't provide a geolocation service. Instead, what the results of this (admittedly badly named) column indicate are what YOUR COMPUTER reports its location as being, using the W3C Geolocation API. The first link you provided above describes this succinctly in the text immediately above the map, where it states "The W3C Geolocation service determins location by the browser providing GPS location (if available) and signal strengths of visible WiFi annoucements" [sic]. Thus, the web page is asking your browser to report where it is located, and your browser is responding that you're somewhere in Ireland.
The question for you then becomes: where is my browser getting this bad data from? On Mac OS X, browsers get this from the Core Location Framework. While Core Location Framework can conceivably use a number of different factors to determine your location, typically it uses the detectable WiFi beacons in your area, mapping their SSIDs and MAC addresses, and their relative strengths to triangulate your location. On Windows it uses the Sensor and Location Platform to do much the same thing.
I don't know much in the way of details of the databases Apple and Microsoft are using on the backend to map your triangulated location based on SSIDs/MACs of visible WiFi access points, however there are a few ways the system can go wrong:
The fact that all your systems had this problem at the same time indicate it's probably one of the above. You can try to fix the situation by changing the SSID of your access point. Depending on the size of your facility, this may be more or less difficult, however it should hopefully make the incorrect results from your OSs' location services either report the correct location, or simply that your location is unknown. You may also need to change the MAC address of your access point(s), but I'd save that as a last resort. Note than making these changes should fix the issue with your systems reporting themselves as being in Ireland, but it may not result in them reporting the correct location (they might report they don't know their location at all). That's okay -- for Apple devices at least, you can fix this by simply having someone with an iPhone with Location Service enabled in the vicinity (Apple's data is crowd sourced automatically through the use of GPS co-ordinates and relative WiFi access point signal strengths (I'm not sure how Microsoft collects the information for their database, so I can't help you there -- a Google search might provide some answers).
HTH!
Yaz
and remember to record the conversation!
Only if its legal to do so in Ireland.
Have gnu, will travel.
I use a browser extension called Secret Agent from https://www.dephormation.org.u.... This works with Gecko-based browsers (e.g., Firefox, SeaMonkey) on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. It sends fake HTTP headers to confuse Web servers that are trying to track my browsing activities. This causes many geolocation routines to give wrong results. I have Secret Agent set to change its faked headers on every HTTP request sent from my browser.
While composing this comment, I tested a few sites. One had me on the coast of Argentina and then (same Web site) in eastern Michigan. GeoIP thinks I am in Indonesia. Although I am indeed in southern California, JustMyIP thinks I am two counties further south. Appspot thinks I am in Palo Alto, about 350 miles north of my home. IP Address Geolocation was the closest, thinking I am in Los Angeles. I am about a five-minute walk from the Los Angeles County line but about 8 miles from the Los Angeles City limits.
Between Secret Agent and setting my cookies file to "read only", I have some limited protection from tracking.
Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from wonderproxy.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards).
Back to safety
NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
It can be frustrating. While at the "Lockn Festival" in Virginia, my phone kept thinking it was in Scottsdale, Arizona. The weather reports were bad enough, but the worst part was the time on my phone kept coming up in Mountain time, so I was always 2 hours behind. I think that issue was because they brought in mobile towers, since that rural part of Virginia doesn't normally have any mobile coverage, and I guess someone forgot to set the location on the towers.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Oh believe me we'd love it if everything magically changed over to the new date. But using them interchangeably is not so fun, like when your bill says it's due on 2/1/2014.
I vacationed in the UK recently and because I was using an IP from a different country than usual, both Google and Yahoo decided to lock up my accounts with their services in ways that potentially could only be resolved in ways that may not have been available because I was abroad (text/call to phone and/or logging in from a previous logged location). Fortunately, I was not relying on either of these services for anything critical such as booking confirmation numbers and did happen to have ways to re-enable the accounts but it could potentially have caused a lot of trouble.
In Chrome you can use the Manual Geolocation extension, in Firefox use Geolocator. With both you can enter the location you want (your actual location or somewhere else) and it will then tell any website that queries that location instead of the default. I use both and they do work, and are much simpler than using a proxy or VPN or other measures.
That sounds like a bug fix to me, to be honest.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Thank you. It's not a wifi issue, as the laptops actually get it right, but a very helpful post, thanks.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg