How Geolocation is More Than GeoIP

How geolocation is more than GeoIP by showing its real-world uses in security, advertising, video licensing, and regulatory compliance.

Finding the location of a device based on its internet protocol address is called “IP Geolocation.” IP Geolocation is used for all kinds of services and is incredibly useful but carries some risks.  Understanding these benefits is important for users, businesses, and policymakers alike.

How Geolocation Information Is Gathered

Services determine the location of a device using one or more methods:

• IP Address-Based Location: Fixed-line internet services, both residential and commercial, usually assign blocks of IP addresses by neighborhood. This allows them to aggregate address information in their regional networks. Once the location of one address is known, it’s reasonable to expect neighboring addresses to be in the same vicinity. Gathering the geography of the first address may be using the internet service provider’s reverse DNS (the domain name service that maps names to IP addresses), or based on data from an app like a map or a rideshare.
• Device Sensors and Standards: Mobile devices employ hardware like GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cell tower connections to pinpoint location.  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established standards enabling web applications to request this data, enhancing service precision.
• Supplementary Data Sources: In areas where GPS signals are weak, devices rely on known Wi-Fi networks and cell towers to estimate location.  Mapping companies maintain extensive databases of these networks to assist in this process.

Geolocation Data Sources

Several well-known companies build databases of locations of IP addresses and sell the data as a service to other companies. One often-cited list of these companies is from the small ISP podcast and blog called The Brothers WISP.

Maxmind is the largest and best known geolocation provider, but IP2Location and others provide similar or enriched data.

Many companies, especially video streaming companies, are known to build their own geolocation databases. These can be harder to find, since they keep their databases private.

An increasing number of ISPs are publishing their own IP geolocation information in a Geofeeds file. This is pretty easy to set up, using a simple comma-separated file like this:

# prefix,country_code,region_code,city,postal

192.0.2.0/24,US,US-MD,Baltimore,21212

203.0.113.0/25,CA,CA_QC,Montreal,

All fields are optional.

This file is then saved to a publicly available site (e.g., https://www.example.com/geofeed.csv), which is published in the RIR records for each address block, as a remark, comment, or geofeed attribute:

How Geolocation Data Is Used

 Geolocation serves various purposes:

• Security: Some countries are home to a disproportionate number of cybersecurity threats, and simply blocking all addresses from those countries can significantly reduce the number of attempts to break into local systems.
• Video Licensing: Video streaming services generally license movies and TV shows to stream them to users in a particular geography. If a streaming provider has a contract allowing them to stream a title to one country, showing it to users in another country would violate the terms of that contract.Similarly, some sports broadcasts are blocked in local areas.
• Advertising: By knowing where a device is, advertising services can show ads for local businesses. There’s no point in showing ads for a restaurant or a car dealer that is a thousand miles away.
• Regulatory Compliance: Businesses must adhere to regional laws, such as California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which grants residents specific rights.  Geolocation helps identify users’ jurisdictions to ensure compliance.
• Fraud Prevention: Financial institutions analyze geolocation data to detect transactions taking place far apart in a short amount of time, aiding in fraud detection and prevention.

Challenges and Considerations

Despite its benefits, geolocation poses challenges:

• Privacy Concerns: The extensive collection and retention of location data can lead to tracking and profiling of users. While this can be useful for tracking criminal suspects, it can be chilling for political oppression, or even just banning certain content or apps in specific jurisdictions.
• Stale Data: Many geolocation providers only update their databases once or twice a month. Any inaccurate information may take weeks to update, and if IPv4 addresses are transferred between parties, the recipient may be listed in the wrong location. This problem often appears at conferences that build their own networks; ads and maps will be provided as if the conference is at its previous location. Search results may even be in different languages!
• Inferences about Data: A bank blocking access to its web site from people in another country mean that if their customers are traveling in that country, they can’t reach their bank.
• Unreliable: Setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is very simple, and there are many cheap VPN services available. To counter this, some companies also block VPN providers, assuming all VPN traffic is from other regions.

Conclusion

Geolocation is a double-edged sword, being very useful while presenting notable challenges.  Network operators and administrators should consider publishing a Geofeed file. Users may want to consider VPN services. Anyone using IP geolocation in determining whether to offer services, or in how they provide service, should have a clear understanding of the challenges and considerations in doing so.

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