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."

Check ARIN

[BeBoxer]

Whois provides info on domain registrations. Go to arin.net and plug your IP into the search field. It should tell you who has been assigned the IP block you are in. That's probably how they are doing the tracking. Anybody can put whatever they want for a reverse DNS entry. Or nothing at all. No reasonable advertising service would use it to target ads. It's too slow and unreliable.

Good luck with that.

[Stalus]

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.

Re:maxmind.com

[TheSpoom]

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:You are worried about targeted ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading the whole summary.

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

Contact Akamai

[pashdown]

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.

Re:huh?

[Buran]

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:happened to me

[MrNaz]

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.

Actually, contact Quova

[davenaff]

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: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:huh?

[adinu79]

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

Re:happened to me

[kdemetter]

That's normal . The whois information of your ip adress doesn't contain your adress , but it likely contains the adress of your ISP headquarters , or some datacenter .

So in other words , your ISP is 25 miles away .

It's probably the same case here : the ISP datacenter might be located in Canada for reason , and so the whois information shows that .

There's no way to fix it , unless you get your ISP to move . Or maybe you could just get another ISP.

Re:Check ARIN

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that whois information can not be legally used for geolocation. Read the whois data terms of service: Commercial use is explicitly forbidden. The whois databases are not available for bulk download without a written agreement about the use of the data.

There are other sources of geolocation information, but they are much less reliable. Reverse DNS has already been mentioned, but nothing says that reverse lookups must be handled by a server in the TLD which matches the organizations country-code. Geolocation services use a combination of several, often ambiguous and conflicting sources of information. There's no way to contact all services, so your best bet is for your ISP to get a fresh allocation and do everything the obvious way: No legacy IPs (assigned before 1997), no reallocations from a larger ISP in another country, reverse DNS handled by a server with the correct CC, correct whois (some do use it nevertheless). Of course that may get you blacklisted for a while because a server with an outdated geolocation database may classify your IP address as a "bogon."

IMHO you should consider yourself lucky. Some people would pay money to get an IP with consistently misidentified geolocation.

Re:Relying on unreliable information

[jibjibjib]

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

Re:maxmind.com

[nicklott]

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:Check ARIN

[value_added]

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:happened to me

[Just Some Guy]

Can I convince Maxmind to like.. you know.. MAKE MY DAMN STATIC IP NOT POINT RIGHT AT ME!?

Nope. There are probably plenty of other sources doing the same. Run whois my.ad.dr.ess sometime to see who owns the netblock you're in. If it's someone like Qwest, that doesn't tell you much. If you use a small ISP, that might get you right to them.

Method #2: dig -t ptr -x my.ad.dr.ess to get the hostname you're posting from, or one of .0 or .255 if that doesn't tell you much. Then whois the domain name or check out their website. That may be as vague as telling the world that you use Comcast, or as specific as yourcity-yourstate-mothersmaidenname-shoesize.pacbell.net.

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[Muad'Dave]

You don't reverse the polarity (the classic definition of polarity loses its neaing with AC, anyway) - you reverse the direction of phase rotation.

3 phase [wikipedia.org] consists of 3 power leads each 120 degrees out of phase with each other. By switching any two leads [answers.com], you will reverse the direction of the phase rotation, which will make the motor turn the other way.

Re:Actually, contact Quova

[pooh666]

Hey I was searching for this answer, because no one else seemed to know it! Surprising to me because Quova in our own testing is not that much more accurate than Maxmind in many cases, but what Quova does that Maxmind doesn't, is to tell you how trustworthy each record is. That makes a big difference, but only if your software takes advantage of it!

Re:possibly stating the obvious

[fredklein]

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

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

No, no. I've found it to be more like this:

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

Teach a man to fish, and he'll whine about how hard it is, and bitch at you for not just giving him a fish.

Here's the demo

[wbean]

For those who want to try it, here's a link to the demo page http://www.maxmind.com/app/lookup_city [maxmind.com]. (And note the link to check your own IP in the bottom right :)