You seem to be making the assumption that all ip location lookups are as good as each other. Google has a lot of money and resources and knowing where you are is a high priority for them, so they can try and return results that they think will be more useful to you because of your location (amoung other things im sure).
In addition, with so much money and resources, and such a massive data stash on all sorts of things, they could easily get hold of more information than the typical company. For instance, maybe they get the ip from your ISP? Who know your address. Or if you are connected to wireless, perhaps another device is connected to the same router, which is allowing google to see itās gps location. Google could see the IP matches the same router, and determine you are not far away from the other device. Or were you logged into a google account? Perhaps the same google account that your phone is registered to?
Just a few ideas, im sure there are more ways to determine location too.
Iām still kicking myself for panicking when it happened to me, rather than stopping to work out how it happened. (I tend to assume that if something unexpected happens, Iāve somehow screwed up, so my first reaction was to āundoā what Iād just done and close the browser.) I think Iād been looking up local information when I followed that link, so I suppose itās possible that the site was just using a ālucky guessā; e.g. I follow a link about lighthouses in Massachusetts, and get met with a āWelcome, visitor from Bostonā message on the assumption that Iām in Massachusetts and Boston is a lucky guess based on population. I dunno. I do know that no other site has ever come remotely close to getting my location.
(My IP address - although not my provider - has changed since I had that creepy experience, so I canāt guarantee the previous one was equally vague; perhaps it did have a more accurate location.)
All IP addresses have a intrisically accurate location. Itās job is to give a network the information it needs to get data from one or multiple locations to the location of your router. The data 3rd parties have on the IP address is what varies, I bet google are good at getting that assosiated data. In order for the data to be sent or recieved, it has to come through that wire in your house, or the mobile mast your phone is connected to.
Just to expand on that a little, unless you pay extra, you usually have a dynamic IP address. So it changes (usually when you restart your router). Your ISP (and probably some other parties) will know which exact geographical location to assosiate the ip address with (the wire to your house etc), but for a third party, they have to either guess, or have access to the information the ISP (and probably other parties that need to know) know, which I believe in many countries is restricted legally as part of your privacy.
Indeed. Thatās what I really meant. The data publicly-available on my current IP address is vague, if the link mawburn gave is any indication, but I canāt vouch for the same being true of my previous address.
(The ālive resultā here shows me as being near Epping Forest. In the absence of more accurate information, Iād have expected it to be showing my ISPās location, which that isnāt - although itās certainly much nearer to my ISP than it is to me. )
does map my ip address correctly to my location!
But all other ip mapping places that I used do not!
So I guess Google must be using this ip mapping place.
But you know I have to test like 1000 randomly selected ips to definitively state that this ip-tracker.org somehow has the most accurate ip mapping data that no one else has.
Itās interesting to me that Appleās iCloud provides a āfind my iPhone / find my Macā service. It tracks the location of my devices not only to the exact dwelling Iām in, but seemingly even to the exact part of the dwelling. I can sort of understand why thatās possible for the phone (due to its connection to mobile towers), but it beats me how it can do that with the desktop Mac, iPad etc, which are only connected via wifi. Seems thereās something more going on here than just nebulous IP addresses.
(Note: I havenāt tested this a lot, and it could be pure coincidence that the blue dot that tracks the device seems to move around the house as I move the laptop around. Itās just an impression I got from minimal testing.)
How do they know which timezone youāre in to set the computerās clock?
There are a lot of satellites up there - GPS wouldnāt be possible without them - so it wouldnāt surprise me if thereās something built in as a āuser benefitā.
Once Again, I am not talking about Google detecting where we are located (correctly) when we access Google sites via the Phone, but via the Web, And just to be clear this amazing detection capability is not Limited to Google but few Big Wall Street run companies like Google.
So again, here is the Mistery
1- Google and some Big Wall Street run companies now exactly where we are located, such as for example if you goto Google Maps they know our exact location
2- But my IP is not mapping into that City at all, set aside that exact location, but into an entirely different City
So how is that Google and few Big Wall Street run companies like Google, can know our EXACT location, when that location info is not being provided by our IP address!
Put another way, as far as I know as a Web developer the only way that we can collect information through someones Web browsers visiting a Web site is what info is provided by their IP and reading their COOKIES which we can read for that Web site only.So how do we access the same information that Google and few Big Wall Street run companies can access about someone visiting a Web site,that would tell us their exact location, so that we can target to them local messages and offering?
And once again, I am not talking about them visiting a Web site via a Phone which would for example emit GPS data but them visiting a Web site via their Computer (Laptop, Notebook, etc)
