[101168] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Using RIR info to determine geographic location...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Dec 20 22:18:53 2007
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:17:36 -0500
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Cc: Hank Nussbacher <hank@efes.iucc.ac.il>,
"nanog@merit.edu"
<nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20071221021317.A44584@gds.best.vwh.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:13:17 +0000
Greg Skinner <gds@best.com> wrote:
>
> Personally, I have trouble accepting some of the claims the
> geotargeting companies have made, such as Quova's 99.9% to the country
> level, and 95% to the US state level. ( More info at
> http://www.quova.com/page.php?id=132 ) Perhaps I'm just part of the
> outlying data; using the "three top search engines" I rarely see them
> get the city correct (ie. where *I* am physically located, as opposed
> to where the registration data says the block is located), and have
> seen some glaring errors for the country in some cases.
>
> Geotargeting has turned into quite a business, and I'm concerned that
> people who rely on these services do not fully understand the risks.
>
Some folks are relying on it for serious purposes. Many Internet
gambling sites use it to avoid serving US customers, for example.
Their risk is criminal liability for the executive -- the have a
strong incentive to get reliable data... Some sports media sites use it
to enforce local area blackouts; though that doesn't need to be
perfect, if it's too imperfect they risk breach of contract and
expensive lawsuits.
For the advertisers, best effort is probably good enough...
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
