"Kwon" <> wrote in message
news:f6vil4$63n$...
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:24:55 -0500, Vanguard wrote:
>
>> "Kwon" wrote in message news
...
>>>
>>> Vanguard wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It depends on how much anyone bothers digging into your IP
>>>> information.
>>>> Go look at:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ipall.ch?ip=67.187.64.8
>>>
>>> There's other ways too, that sometimes gives more accurate hits.
>>>
>>> http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity
>>
>>
>> I'm not using a lookup tool for IP address info that requires the
>> installation of a program, especially one that is bait for
>> commercialware (for prices see
>> http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_features). A big no thanks.
>
> Well, the only thing I needed was the database and a script that could
> read from it.
>
>> So when you enter 67.187.64.8 as the IP address to trace, what do YOU
>> get when using this locally installed tracer program?
>
> Carrollton. Which seems to not be accurate this time.
So it got to the same point as anyone looking up the registration for
the domain.
> Geolite is actually
> free while the "big version" costs money, but the service still are
> dependent on users sending correct data to them.
Oh, I see how it works. You download their database. You have to
repeatedly download their database to stay up to date but there is an
update function in their code (which you need to download). If you use
their script then you need to download the C library (i.e., code). I
didn't see anything particularly nasty but I only glanced over a couple
of the main C code files.
"We obtain the known IP location pairs from sites that ask the web
visitor to provide their geographic location." So they help collect
your personal info or collude with other sites to socially engineer you
into divulging that info. For example, when you register at a site, say
to join a forum, the questions include city, state, zip, etc. which then
eventually get distributed by that site to a 3rd party, like to MaxMind.
However, the IP address is often dynamic which means someone else will
eventually get it but the trick is that IP address ranges are often
delegated in a specific region by the ISP (i.e., their IP pool at their
regional hub always uses the same IP range for those customers).
So here we have a prime example of where you might think your personal
information is private and known only to the site at which you
registered and divulged your personal info (i.e., location) but instead
it gets passed onto 3rd parties that buy the personal info, like MaxMind
whose intent is to lure you to their paid services to access that info.
So be damn sure to read the TOS at a web site when registering there to
see what they do with the personal info you give them. They could be
selling it off to "affiliates", like MaxMind.
"By accurately pinpointing the location of Internet customers and
visitors by country, geographic region, down to the granular detail of
city in real-time, MaxMind enables online businesses to have a valuable
marketing tool as well as the ability to customize their websites to
better serve clients."
Online businesses with which I deal already have my personal info. If I
order from Newegg then obviously they have to know where to ship the
order. So these "online businesses" is a euphemism for spammers
(probably web sites) that want to target their pitch based on your
location.
So, yeah, they have a free service but realize how they got that info
and to whom they are reselling it. While the lookup doesn't reveal your
info, you could check if they managed to already get it through other
venues.
> Sometimes, a regular traceroute works fine too...
>
> 13 te-6-1-ar01.sharpsridge.tn.knox.comcast.net <snip>
> 14 te-8-1-ur01.west.tn.knox.comcast.net <snip>
>
> ... where "tn" may be "tenn"? But such traces may require a bit more
> guessing. Not reliable, in other words.
Traceroute not required. All it did was show the .tn in the IP name
which was already discernable from the nslookup.