Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Steel, notfred
Wirko wrote:I connect to my home wi-fi network with my Android phone or tablet and sometimes forget to turn GPS off on one or the other. For Google, that's more than enough. The desktop browser shows me my exact location and it makes no difference if it's FF or Chrome.
just brew it! wrote:How close is "surprisingly close"?
Wirko wrote:phone or tablet and sometimes forget to turn GPS off
meerkt wrote:Technically off, but still just a few kilometers away.
Any accessible finer-than-IP-block databases you know of?
meerkt wrote:just brew it! wrote:How close is "surprisingly close"?
Technically off, but still just a few kilometers away.
Any accessible finer-than-IP-block databases you know of?Wirko wrote:phone or tablet and sometimes forget to turn GPS off
Mobile devices here rarely use WiFi, and I'm pretty sure not since the last WAN IP change.
(GPS is off by default but I'm assuming nearby WiFi spots are enough; any easy way to query Google for info based on an AP's MAC address, or to request deletion?)
meerkt wrote:I do wonder how it works, regardless of avoiding it.
The hostnames of the first few hops to Google imply locations that are >100 km away, the closest (later hop) is still some 50 km. IP geo data for the above IPs gives about 80 km. Also, the detected location is very unlikely to be a NOC.
Neighbors, that's an interesting idea. Let's check the size of the IP block...
Perhaps despite what they state, it is based on some unknown non-IP hints.
JBI wrote:They can still claim it is "IP-based" if they are doing it by correlating your IP with similar IPs from your neighbors!
just brew it! wrote:They can still claim it is "IP-based" if they are doing it by correlating your IP with similar IPs from your neighbors!
Goty wrote:Yeah, it was mentioned earlier. But that shouldn't be available in this case.Google also knows the approximate location (to within a few hundred feet, likely) of your home network from the vehicle-based wifi scans
meerkt wrote:just brew it! wrote:They can still claim it is "IP-based" if they are doing it by correlating your IP with similar IPs from your neighbors!
Yep.
I'm not sure how to interpret ASN IP ranges. Can they overlap?
My current IP is supposedly /23, but there also appears to be a /15 with the same prefix.
Doing anything with the above requires two assumptions:
1. That the ISP hands out IP ranges based on geographical areas. Any reason to assume that?
2. That Google figured out the ISP's system. They'd have to keep historical data for every IP to correlate things. Likelihood: between "very likely" and "absolutely certain".
I'll keep an eye out the next time I'm on a different range.
meerkt wrote:I'm not sure how to interpret ASN IP ranges. Can they overlap?
My current IP is supposedly /23, but there also appears to be a /15 with the same prefix.
meerkt wrote:Doing anything with the above requires two assumptions:
1. That the ISP hands out IP ranges based on geographical areas. Any reason to assume that?
meerkt wrote:2. That Google figured out the ISP's system. They'd have to keep historical data for every IP to correlate things. Likelihood: between "very likely" and "absolutely certain".
meerkt wrote:Yeah, it was mentioned earlier. But that shouldn't be available in this case.
meerkt wrote:But these are public addresses. Considering the scarcity of IPv4, they probably can't waste IPs by allocating a range per region.
Glorious wrote:The AS number my address is under has 42 million addresses in it.
Verizon FIOS, one of the biggest ISPs in the country, does this for a fact
The biggest question for me is if Google has a much better idea than the generic geolocation databases.
just brew it! wrote:As long as everyone in a subnet is using DHCP, there's nothing preventing them from swapping subnets around as the number of subscribers in a particular area changes.
meerkt wrote:just brew it! wrote:As long as everyone in a subnet is using DHCP, there's nothing preventing them from swapping subnets around as the number of subscribers in a particular area changes.
But then there's no range-to-location correlation. Or at least not as strong.
meerkt wrote:I don't mean the whole ASN. Just the specific block my IP is in, one of many assigned to the same ASN.
meerkt wrote:They may be able to afford it because they're big and have a whole lot of spares from times before IPv4 depletion.
meerkt wrote:They do, at least versus the common IP databases I encountered. See above for what databases show as the location of my IP, and of hops along the way.
JBI wrote:"Hey, 50% of the WiFi traffic on this subnet is suddenly coming from devices which report they are in Salt Lake City, and none of it is coming from Newark any more..."
just brew it! wrote:It shouldn't take long for them to figure out the subnet moved
Glorious wrote:Again, I'm unsure what you are getting at.
maybe you don't have Verizon. Yes, maybe your ISP doesn't do that. But mere fact that Verizon does SHOULD demystify much of the magic
Are you in the middle of nowhere, or within "a few kilometers" of geographic locus?
meerkt wrote:On second thought, ISPs can subdivide ranges however they see fit, so IANA blocks shouldn't matter.