Taedrin
Gallente
The Green Cross
Controlled Chaos
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Posted - 2011.03.03 23:09:00 -
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Edited by: Taedrin on 03/03/2011 23:14:07
 Originally by: Antihrist Pripravnik
You want to see something creepy and tin-foil hat worth? HTML5 standard can bring you all the paranoia you need. 
http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html
Practical example:
http://html5demos.com/geo
The accuracy of geolocation varies wildly depending upon the device that is utilizing it. For example, a desktop computer with only a wired network connection only gives out the IP address. IP addresses are only bound to a general geographic location by convention: NOT by any sort of standard which ISPs are bound to.
Generally, your geolocation is determined by doing a tracert on your IP address, and parsing the name of the router to extract clues on your geographic location.
For example, the second to last router on a tracert to my IP address yields:
"dtr01mnplmi-gbe-1-46.bycy.mi.charter.com"
There are 3 clues that I see in my example:
mi = Michigan
bycy = bay city
mnplmi = Mount Pleasant, MI
Now, even IF these router names can be trusted, they only hint at the location of my ISP's router. They still don't know where exactly I live. They only know that my ISP is in Mount Pleasant, MI. So when I use a geolocation service they can only pin me down to a city. And even then, they only know that my ISP is in that city. I could be ANYWHERE in my ISP's service area. And if my ISP doesn't label the geographic location in the router's name, then the accuracy is even LESS accurate, as the service must use a router closer to the backbone (and thus theoretically further from me).
The scary part comes when you connect to the Internet wirelessly. Using a properly configured smartphone, these geolocation services can access your GPS and find your location within a couple meters. Even without GPS, an internet connection via a cell phone can let the geolocation service find out which cell phone towers are close to you. With some more advanced techniques, it could try to figure out your location through trilateration - so long as you are within range of 3 cell phone towers. Even if you are only in range of 1 cell phone tower, it can pin it down to within a couple of miles.
So all of you people with those fancy smartphones who pay 30 USD a month for a measly 3-6 GiB of bandwidth should be stocking up on tinfoil hats. Those of us who stick with landlines are still relatively safe from "Big Brother".
EDIT:
I would also like to mention that the ONLY way to connect your IP address with an exact address is if someone is able to subpoena your ISP. And ISPs REALLY don't like handing this information out. Even if you can subpoena the ISP, they may simply respond that the IP address is dynamically assigned so they don't know. It is up to the issuer of the subpoena to be intelligent enough to ask the ISP who was assigned that dynamic IP address on X particular date.
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Originally by: Dr Fighter
"how do you know when youve had a repro accident"
Theres modules missing and morphite in your mineral pile.
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