Ministry of Propaganda - 03/Apr/2004: "No, I'm not in London"
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No, I'm not in London
I've just come over a service which claims it can give quite accurate information about where a visitor is from. They call themselves Ipowered - IP Location Services. In a little box they display what they believe they know about you, the picture on the left is a screen dump of what they claimed where I was.
Most of it is right, which wasn't exactly difficult to determine as they obviously know my provider. But this is where I'm beginning to have my doubts:
They claim I'm in London. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I'm not, I'm in Swindon which is something like 60 miles west of London. Reasonably close, but still wrong.
I don't know how BT distributes their IP-Adresses, but if they (or another UK ISP) distribute them all over the country I can foresee some interesting results: A Scot being told he's in England, a Geordie being told he's in London or an Essex Girl being told she's in Newcastle. I don't think this looks professional at all (as they claim on their website), on the contrary, it might even confuse some people and send them straight to another site.
But I'm curious now, how accurate is their service? Their FAQ have some data about the accuracy, but I'd like to know if some of the scenarios I described above are happening. Which means I need your help: Can you visit their site and let me know how close (or how far off) they were?
End of entry
Entry trivia
- When writing this entry the weather was: Rain
- When writing this entry I was listening to: nothing, my hearing hasn't fully recovered yet (although it's improving)
- I'm currently reading/have just finished reading this book/publication: The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security - Kevin D. Mitnick
- I recently visited this website/-page: Celtic 2 - Hearts 2 (in the last minute, after Celtic were 0-2 down...)
- The last drink I had was/is: Milk
Dodgy picture of the moment:
This is somewhere in the Solling in Germany. Which I don't know because of IP Location Services but because my mother told me.
End of entry trivia
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