How To Clean Up Incorrect Geolocation Information?

zorro6 writes "I thought this might be an interesting question/topic and it would sure help me to get some kind of answer. I recently got internet service from a small, local wireless ISP in my area (south central Colorado, USA). The strange thing is that many, many web sites think I am in Quebec, Canada when I use the service. Evidently some geolocation service thinks my IP address indicates I am in Canada. I have checked the obvious. The WHOIS information for my IP correctly indicates a location of Durango, CO. So the bad info is coming from some more sophisticated geolocation service. My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French! Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada. So far I know that Yahoo! (or their ad provider), Nvidia, Movielink, etc. all think I am in Canada. I would sure appreciate any help/info on how to get this corrected."

personal sites

[hansoloaf (668609)]

Adult Friend Finder would like to know too
it's silly when they show many hot looking ladies from Morrisville VT (pop. 2000).

Move?

[BizzyM (996195)]

Or perhaps you should just move out of Quebec???

Re:personal sites

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

It's stupid, but I always look twice... pop 10k here, so I would have seen them before.

Still, my favorite has to be this one [thedailywtf.com], and ones like it.

Seriously, one of these days, I have got to get into the porn business. If any idiot with FrontPage can make money, imagine what will happen when you get someone competent... I can see it now: PornDB! Complete with buzzword compliance (social networking! REST!) and a query language!

SELECT videos.* FROM models LEFT JOIN videos ON model_id WHERE bust_size > size('33C') AND bmi 120;

(Nobody mod me insightful!)

Proxy

[KevMar (471257)]

You might have to track down a proxy to surf from.

Re:Proxy

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

Or, a hidden proxy upstream is the problem.

possibly stating the obvious

[v1 (525388)]

but you're going to get a lot more help if you provide your ip address, even if you don't like doing that to the crowd. Or at least let us know what your router's IP address is or some other address in your subnet, since they are probably all the same (wrong).

Unless you are only interested in knowing the generals of how to fix it yourself, not more in depth examination of your problem (and possibly an immediate solution) This will be the difference between "try this and look that up and see what this is and google for that and ..." vs "call XXX at 555-1212 and ask for their geo department, problem solved".

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[TheSpoom (715771)]

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he'll feed himself for years.

Hackers follow this model when giving support. Even if the asker gave such details, we'd likely show them how to figure out the answer themselves. It's not that we don't care to give a quick solution, it's that we want to share the knowledge so they can help themselves and help others in the future.

And frankly, I wouldn't want to make it immediately obvious what my IP address was to such a large audience. There's inevitably going to be some jackass that sends a botnet at it.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[thetartanavenger (1052920)]

And frankly, I wouldn't want to make it immediately obvious what my IP address was to such a large audience. There's inevitably going to be some jackass that sends a botnet at it.

I was about to correct you for thinking there would only be the one jackass, when I realised that slashdot is it's own human botnet.. So by posting his own address, he'd be the jackass unleashing the botnet upon himself..

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Yvan256 (722131)]

Give a man fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[synaptic (4599)]

Give a man a fish and he'll tell you to cook it for him while you're at it.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[arachnoprobe (945081)]

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[ConanG (699649)]

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you lose your monopoly on fish.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[TubeSteak (669689)]

I would have suggested he have his ISP assign him different IPs until he gets one that geolocates to America.

"Don't know what's going on" is different from "we can't resolve the matter"

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Stray7Xi (698337)]

Glad to hear you'll help. My IP is 192.168.1.101. If that's not enough my router's IP is 192.168.1.1.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Yvan256 (722131)]

Wow, you must be living pretty close to me, my router's IP is 192.168.0.1!

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[bloodninja (1291306)]

Wow, you must be living pretty close to me, my router's IP is 192.168.0.1!

Amazing! That's the IP address of my luggage!

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm about to DoS your router in 3...2...1...[NO CARRIER]

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Z34107 (925136)]

I'm running Vista. I'm located at 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1, or possibly at FF02::1. Take me down if you can; Vista's pretty secure!

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[nog_lorp (896553)]

Fuck the RFCs, I modified all the necessary software (incl. router), and run on the 207.46.197.0 subnet, so no one can access microsoft.com from the lan.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[CopaceticOpus (965603)]

Look behind you.

Start Downloading!

[Anonymous Coward]

Download anything and everything. The MPAA will think your in Canada and look for someone else to sue.

Re:Start Downloading!

[[m1] (1392)]

the MPAA will think my what is in canada?

Good luck with that.

[Stalus (646102)]

Even if you do get the address corrected, it will take years before these companies update their databases and work correctly. About a year ago, the US Post Office changed the zip code in the area that I just moved into, and it has been a hassle left and right.

The electric company claimed they didn't offer service to a house that they were currently providing electricity to. My health insurance was changed to an 'out of area' plan even though my dad already had the right provider in the same zip code. Sears wouldn't deliver until I gave them the old, incorrect zip code. Even Google still has it wrong on some maps, but not others (and I filed the bug months ago, but no fix).

Welcome to another series of problems created by software developers who made bad assumptions.

CO IS CANADA

[rcarsey (158673)]

As you may have been aware, the US economy has been in a rut. I'm not quite sure how "connected" you folks are out there in them sticks of Colorado.. but Bush decided he needed a new war to boost the economy and get cash flowing again.

The Russians weren't interested.. so we picked a fight with neighboring Canada. As is usual with US military operations lately, we failed.

Your part of the country actually IS Canada now dude. Good luck.. better than living in the States.

I'm not here

[enoz (1181117)]

I'm interested to find out how to clean up "incorrect" Geolocation info too.

Increasingly it appears sites are using GeoLocation to route you to a different version of their website, or prevent you from viewing content.

Sometimes it may be useful, such as when Google serving you localised adverts, however when they get it wrong it can becomes a great pain in the arse.

Worse is when sites ban you from viewing content, or just ban you completely, based on your location.

I'm sure some people will rationalise the need for Geolocation for restricting content, but I think it is akin to putting a poster in a public place and then trying to restrict people from viewing it.

Quoi?

[pipingguy (566974)]

Desole, mais je ne comprend pas. S'il vous plait, ecrit en francais.

Merci,

Jean-Guy de Tabernac

Re:Quoi?

[UnixUnix (1149659)]

"ecrivez en francais", you insensitive Claude :))

Yahoo Ads

[rueger (210566)]

My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this but it is causing me a lot of grief. Many of the ads I get shown on Yahoo! for instance are in French!

Ah, you're complaining about the utility of ads that you see on Yahoo...? This must be a first.

Contact Akamai

[pashdown (124942)]

Have your ISP contact Akamai. As an ISP who was also misidentified as "being outside of the USA" by Akamai's geolocation, our customers suffered from the exact same kinds of problems with region protection on network streaming. We didn't get it resolved until we were able to shake the tree properly at Akamai.

AFAIK, Akamai has the most utilized geolocation service out there.

Actually, contact Quova

[davenaff (839028)]

Most of the major Internet companies use Quova (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) for their IP geolocation data (linky [quova.com]. You don't need to have your ISP contact them. Just send an email to [e-mail] with your IP and physical location. They used to provide weekly data updates, so I imagine it is equivalent or more frequent now.

Re:Sounds like it's time for a call to the ISP...

[enoz (1181117)]

So, why not ask the ISP what's going on?

From the summary:

My ISP is at a loss as to how to fix this

There, I just saved you having to RTFS.

Re:maxmind.com

[TheSpoom (715771)]

I agree with this. I've implemented GeoIP on a bunch of sites. Basically, they give you a database linking class A / B / C blocks to certain areas. I don't know where they get this data, but it's what most sites use to determine where you're from. I suggest contacting MaxMind, the maintainers of GeoIP, to correct your information (it's not immediately obvious from their FAQ who you should talk to, but I would start at their contact page [maxmind.com]). Unfortunately, getting them to make the change may not immediately come into effect on clients' sites... most sites use a static version of the database and update it fairly infrequently (since GeoIP charges for a subscription).

As a side note, I once made an antifraud system on a major unlocked cell phone seller that relied mostly on flagging orders coming from certain countries (using GeoIP) as possible fraud, as well as people who had used the same CC number on more than one account, people who had more than one account in general (using various stats like email address), etc. Seemed to work pretty well for them.

Re:maxmind.com

[nicklott (533496)]

You can check if it's maxmind by simply pasting your IP in the box on this page: http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip [maxmind.com]

I've spoken to some of the devs there before; if it's wrong I don't think you'll have any problems getting it changed.

Re:happened to me

[bladesjester (774793)]

Maybe it was trying to tell you that the closest sexy ladies were 25 miles away :P

(I'm trying really hard to not make Ohio jokes since I live here lol)

Re:happened to me

[Dak RIT (556128)]

Geolocation services are just large databases that map IP addresses to physical locations. There's really nothing else to it. Who owns a set of IP addreses can also change quite frequently, and so these databases need constant updating.

As an example, here's the FAQ [geoio.com] provided by a geolocation service I've used in the past:

GEO I/O compiles several sources of data to achieve 99% accuracy at the country level, 85% at the state/regional level, 80% at the (US) city level (within a 25-mile radius), and 60% accuracy for cities outside of the US. The data is stored in a proprietary format, limiting our ability to make individual changes to it, however the database is updated monthly by our data providers.

Basically, it will get fixed when the group maintaining the data updates it, which in my experience can be anywhere from a couple weeks to a year.

Re:happened to me

[MrNaz (730548)]

There are two widely used geolocation services which should be your starting point:
MaxMinds [maxmind.com] and IP2Location [ip2location.com].

I would contact them and get them to update their records, especially MaxMind, as they are probably the most widely used geolocation service on the Internet.

Re:happened to me

[Mike89 (1006497)]

I have the exact opposite problem... plugging my IP address into Maxmind, I get my EXACT town (and it's a small one, believe me). Yet, any other address in my ISPs range just says the capital city of my state. Can I convince Maxmind to like.. you know.. MAKE MY DAMN STATIC IP NOT POINT RIGHT AT ME!? And how'd it get like that in the first place?

Re:happened to me

[Chapter80 (926879)]

Maybe it's because you HAPPEN to live "in the centerpoint of town" or whatever point they happen to point to.

No one assumes that those are EXACT, so you're safe.

Honest, Mike. We couldn't find you if we tried.

<knock> <knock>

Re:happened to me

[Chapter80 (926879)]

You should go to another site, and do a "tracert" (traceroute) to your regular location, and see what path it takes (noting the last few locations). Or do a tracert from your regular location and look at the first few entries. Maybe even try a web-based tracert site. [tracert.com]

You may see an upstream location that appears to be in Canada. Maybe the reverse lookup domain name is misleading, and these geo services are making an assumption (like router5-ontario-ca.someisp.com being in Ontario Canada, and not Ontario California [google.com]).

Re:But you probably *are* a canuck!

[arth1 (260657)]

It is always wrong to blame the user for stale cookies. Cookies are set by the server, not the user, and the server can (and should) update them as necessary.

Besides, that has nothing to do with the problem here, which happens when the web site looks up the IP address in a locator service, and gets wrong information back. The IP address is independent of cookies.

Re:But you probably *are* a canuck!

[profplump (309017)]

Not that cookies have anything to do with geo-location of IP addresses, but you're only 98% correct. Cookies are set by the server. And servers should updates them as necessary.

But sometimes you have old cookies with names that still mean something to the server, and values that don't. It's bad programming practice, but it happens. In particular it can happen if you don't go to the site very often -- when the site is updated from v1 to v2, v2 can read v1 cookies without a problem. And when the site is updated from v2 to v3, v3 can read v2 cookies without a problem. But if you visit during v1, and don't visit again until v3, the server could be confused by your cookies that are invalid for both v2 and v3. Obviously the right choice is for the server to clear/update cookies it doesn't understand, but that doesn't always happen. And while clearing the cookies client-side is lame, it does fix such problems.

Re:huh?

[Buran (150348)]

The only 'grief' you've elaborated on is being shown ads (which most everyone on slashdot probably blocks or ignores anyway) in French. That hardly seems tangible. Can you elaborate in a comment, please?

Article summary says "Certain sites won't sell me goods or services because they don't do business in Canada."

That's a lot worse than inline ads.

Re:huh?

[XopherMV (575514)]

I was in Mexico recently. Whenever I visited Google, I'd get the Mexican Google site. Getting the USA Google website was virtually impossible. As soon as I changed the URL, it'd just forward me back to the Mexican Google site.

Yahoo exhibited the exact same behavior. Same thing happened with a bunch of other websites. It was really damn annoying. As an American living in the US, I was never aware of this behavior because I never previously ran into it.

Hulu was particularly bad because they only display video for "US" IPs. This guy is legitimately living in the US, but with his IP coming up as Canada, he wouldn't be able to access that website.

Re:huh?

[adinu79 (860333)]

Or www.google.com/ncr ... this sets a cookie that prevents further redirects to country-specific sites.

Re:Move to Canada

[Bonobo_Unknown (925651)]

You'll need the cheap meds after your fill of cheap women.

Re:Check ARIN

[Anonymous Coward]

this is all wrong. whois is also used to query the arin database. as the OP stated, this whois information from ARIN is correct.

reverse DNS can not be modified by anyone. only the authoritative nameserver for a region of IP address space (your isp's isp) can delegate that role to another party. this is the essence of the in-addr.arpa domain. most ISPs will not even allow customers with static IP addresses to control the reverse DNS for their addresses.

if you perform reverse dns lookups on the IP addresses appearing near the end of a traceroute you can find useful information for geolocation of the target address. networks generally provide reverse dns for router IP addresses, and those are likely to reveal where the router lives.

Re:Check ARIN

[value_added (719364)]

most ISPs will not even allow customers with static IP addresses to control the reverse DNS for their addresses.

Dunno what you mean by most or control, but for ATT DSL customers, a call to DNS Provisioning and a day's wait is all that's required. For their part, they basically just create a CNAME record and let you take care of the rest. Unless, of course, you choose to have them take of the rest.

Re:Relying on unreliable information

[1u3hr (530656)]

any website using Geo-IP information (and yes Google, I'm talking to you!) gets it wrong. It's really a case of people trying to make their software too clever.

I live in Hong Kong, and my IP matches that. But I don't read Chinese. Many websites thoughtfully redirect me to a Chinese language site, and have NO FUCKING WAY to override their language choice. Google.com is automatically converted to Google.com.hk. Assholes. If I wanted Google.com.hk I WOULD HAVE TYPED IT MYSELF. Yes, I know, now, how to fix that on my PC, but Google still does that whenever I use it from someone else's PC.

And it was always good for a laugh to see the Adult Friend Finder ads, with buxom corn-fed blondes spreading their legs under the heading "Girls in Hong Kong want to meet you for sex".

Re:Relying on unreliable information

[jibjibjib (889679)]

Try going to some other country-specific google url, or going to www.google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect).

Re:Relying on unreliable information

[Chuck Chunder (21021)]

By "wedding cake" he presumably means "online porn"