IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old(sanjayparekh.com) |
IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old(sanjayparekh.com) |
October 1994. which is 28 years ago. Contains the inetnum: object as follows
The information in the old inetnum object
inetnum: 192.87.45.0
netname: RIPE-NCC
descr: RIPE Network Coordination Centre
descr: Amsterdam, Netherlands
country: NL
IMHO, it wasn't hard to figure out roughly where servers or peers were in the real world based on their IP address and network routes to them, but it was non obvious why someone would want to pay for a service...
And even before the existence of data privacy laws, this simply would not have worked.
Instead companies like Maxmind implemented the much better idea of sourcing location data from Whois databases and ISPs server-side.
That's what everybody understands when you use the term "IP Geolocation".
is very different to
"I invented it"
Now, the fact that I called it by an ancient reference should probably have been the first clue that I didn't get there first, and sure enough later I found out that actually no, it's a very old idea in computer programming.
For the record, I can place back reliably to about 2001 the first time I was introduced to someone showing me an actual free application of searching/displaying ip lookups and laying it out on a visual map because it was about the only thing of value I took away from my first year information systems course, and although I can't remember the name of the application or program used, i've never heard of the blog writers company or his competitor: free software that did it must have already been available and mature for doing it and was being passed around during that time because it was already freely available by the time lowly old me turned up.
And given that the theory of doing so probably worked out long before that I think "invented" might be a liiiiiiiitle bit of a stretch...
I've spent a lot of time working with the Maxmind and other paid datasets for IP geolocation. One thing you'll quickly notice is that they disagree with each other, sometimes giving answers on different continents.
There's challenges here. IP addresses are dynamically assigned. They are bought and sold to different companies regularly.
That's not even getting into problems like VPNs, or remote browser sessions. The details and context are lacking here, but I disagree that you can be certain where a user is located using those tools and its harmful to believe you can.
You can derive an enormous amount of geolocation data by looking at WHOIS data: https://ipapi.is/geolocation.html
Every major global tech company has made this mistake and nearly all of them deliberately override my Accept-Language request header and ignore it.
Did you know that over 8 million people worldwide are native speakers of Catalan, whilst only 4 million people speak Norwegian? Guess which speakers are continually ignored.
When I travel to France, should websites push me to use the website in French, even though I don’t speak it? No.
Incorrect understanding of the problem and badly misused over time. I’d vote to have the IP2Location databases killed off and buried for good.
Content control geo fencing is only recent, and streaming was there and will continue to be there long after IP geofencing stops being a practice. In fact, I believe if the technology wasn't around, streaming would have been accessible to more people.
Any amateur "carder" (what credit card thieves call themselves) knows that IP geolocation is in fact good for them, because they can easily load up a proxy or VPN, making this arbitrary, problematic (read: tracking) factor in their favour to steal money and commit identity fraud. There are easily accessible programs online that provide ZIP code accurate IP proxies.
I can go on and on about how terrible IP Geolocation is for almost everyone.
But you did mention the motivation of geoip for detecting location for selecting a language, and given that's what people still do these days despite Accept-Language headers being available for most clients, I think it's worth a call out.
But at least the companies I consult can block Chinese IP addresses from their public web presence. Chinese security will never think to stand up a server in the US or Europe.
(Yes, I know it can help block noisy log generation).
How different was it to what was offered in the past?
I used to think this data was sourced from ISPs and could not be deduced from how you mentioned in your post
The other part of your question, I think, deserves its own blog post. One of my tenants was to NEVER be reliant on someone else's willingness to give us data or access. So, everything was designed with the idea that we would have to gather first-hand data and knowledge. If an ISP gave us data, that would be great and make things easier. But being beholden to ISPs would mean we would be hosed if the sands shifted. This is why I am still flabbergasted when people build their entire company based on someone else's platform, API, etc., and then are upset when those platforms change their models. If you build the foundation of your company on someone else's land, be prepared to lose the house.
Was the market really that small for IP geolocation 25 years ago? I don't remember it being a problem to source the data...
So I always found it infuriating that web sites would try to guess my language from geoip when my browser already sends Accept-Language headers. They spend resources doing this stuff, think they're doing their users a service, give themselves a pat on the back, and then unnecessarily screws up the UX for a significant portion of the users.
I have no idea why companies keep doing this.
Very satisfying to read!
Let's see what your patent is about:
A method, computer program product and electronic device are provided for providing hyper-local geo-targeting based on validated, user-supplied geographic information, wherein the user's anonymity may be maintained. In particular, user-supplied geographic information may be collected in association with a truncated IP address. Once collected, the user-supplied information may be validated using geographic data previously derived from one or more complete IP addresses corresponding to the received truncated IP address. The derived geographic data may have been derived using a system that maps the routing infrastructure of the Internet in order to determine where endpoints on the Internet are located. The validated, user-supplied geographic information, which may be more specific than the derived geographic data, may then be used to provide more granular and accurate geo-targeting, all the while maintaining the privacy of the individual users.
User-supplied geographic info. Aha.
First claim:
1. A method comprising:
receiving, by a computer over a network, a truncated internet protocol (IP) address associated with a user device related to a specific user;
receiving, by the computer, user-supplied geographic information associated with the truncated IP address, the user-supplied geographic information not being linked to the specific user;
retrieving, by the computer from a database, geographic data derived from one or more complete IP addresses corresponding to the truncated IP address;
validating, by the computer, the user-supplied geographic information based at least in part on the geographic data, the validating comprising determining if the user-supplied geographic information is the same or equivalent to the derived geographic data associated with at least one of the one or more complete IP addresses corresponding to the truncated IP address, wherein in response to the user-supplied geographic information being validated, the user-supplied geographic information permits providing geo-targeted information.
I may not be perfect at reading patent legalize, but this "Invention" does not make any sense to me. So someone is providing his geo location, to then receive his geo location? Yay.
I've been using geo location for over 25 years now. And I have never heard about your company. And pretty much everybody uses Maxmind for 22 years now. Because they have an actual product, a website, pricing, and a free offering that's deployed on hundreds of thousands of servers.
Your company website on the other hand makes me want to puke. No way to actually see any IP Geolocation services. No products, no pricing. Just BLABLABLA WHY WE ARE SO GREAT.
So, guess what: No, nobody stole your idea. Nobody every heard about you or your idea, and nobody cared.
Maybe instead of posting this here actually invent something that is of use, and then come back here?
Yes, these have been rude words. But did you REALLY come here to get praise on this whiny narcissistic blog post of yours? Next time, please have this discussion in front of your bathroom mirror instead.
> Browsers set required values for this header according to their active user interface language. Users rarely change it, and such changes are not recommended because they may lead to fingerprinting.
> The content of Accept-Language is often out of a user's control (when traveling, for instance). A user may also want to visit a page in a language different from the user interface language.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...
:shrug:
Edit: and ‘a user might not be the owner of the computer and therefore the accept language might be wrong‘ sounds like a UI problem that a ‘file -> set language’ workflow would solve.
That said: There's a reason I am going to google.com and not google.co.jp, fucking thanks fucking good day fucking fuck.
1. I'm in (east of) France geo
2. My system is set to en_GB
Yet some websites insist in putting me in Germany. Sometimes it even changes between requests (web pages), some are extra nutty and I even get mixed content within the same page.
For the love of all that is holy, please stop being clever. UAs have had Accept-Language headers ever since RFC3282. Use that hint.
english + metric || gtfo
Old articles like yours can be read to the end, but with a banner blocking a third of the page, and nearly 100% of new articles I've come across in the past year get a nice paywall right at the entire reason I clicked on the article. All the new articles that aren't blocked are worthless content I wish I hadn't clicked on.
yaml says "NO"
Also, you probably don't know what data goes into Maxmind but that's okay. It doesn't matter to me since I exited a long time ago and have no dog in the fight anymore. But just because you don't know Digital Envoy doesn't mean you aren't using (and paying for) their data. ;-)
The patent is absolutely trivial and would be thrown out in 5 minutes on the first objection. It does not even specify an implementation. Yes, patent language makes it sound important, but basically your "invention" can be summarized in one sentence. That's not an invention.
It's all bullshit. The company website now reads "50 patents on this!". It's a single patent, and yes, in the EU every copy of a patent is registered for each country and therefore you get 50 patent numbers.
Sorry to hurt your feelings, but as you are still insisting to be an inventor. You are not. You may be a great marketer if someone really paid you for this, but that's all.
(I also have "50" patents. But I would not brag about it, and my invention at least consists of a complex idea and 15 pages describing the implementation.)
And finally: The idea is illegal in the EU, where an IP is regarded as personal data, and you would need a written approval by every single user. And I have seen GDPR cookie popups, but never a sanjay popup.
Please just stop trying to impress tech people with a trivial sales person idea. You are abusing the patent system as a troll, and exactly this makes everyone in the industry hate it.
I'll also say that even though I invented IP location technology, I am an avid user of privacy-shielding VPNs. Just because you invent something doesn't mean you don't regret some of the uses of said thing.
Accept-Language headers aren't obviously the user's preference, though. There's the four users that manually set it, and for them it is their preference. Mostly everyone else is getting a default based on their OS language, which often isn't really something they set either.
There's also the problem where the country appropriate website for where you are may not have a language you understand.
From experience watching other people use computers, most people don't even know WTF "locale" is or anything even tangentially related. More than likely they just use whatever was configured by default, which most of the time makes sense for them but it's not a given.
Hence, it's unreliable.
IP geolocation on the other hand, you can at least assume the broad region where they are connecting from (VPNs and proxies aside).