Blogger meets his Troll

scamalert

say_who_now? wrote: »

No, you won't.

And there are plenty of easily accessible IP to real address databases, for COMPANY registered addresses, not so much for individuals.

With Outlook and Skype, you already know who the individual is, and it's not too hard to Google their name, but if they have any sense, they won't have put their home address on the internet, so that still leaves you the problem of tying their IP address to their home address, LEGALLY remember?

If I use my dear old nana's internet connection to access my fake twitter and facebook profiles and spam the hell out of yours, then fill your e-mail inbox with spam, good luck to you trying to prove it was me, whether by illegal or legal means.

Now who's being naive?

So what your using your relatives address,might be your neighbors wifi,in most cases that would track down you eventually to 30 meters radius,that's enough to get your arms broken.But theres a line insulting someone/and threatening to kill and sending threatening items to the house.nowadays kids only know how to use ps3 and maybe how install a game but when it comes to internet security/being anonymous its a rare find,especially who would spend time doing such horrible things with such skills.

Zab

28064212 wrote: »

Yes. An IP address does not "work out whose router it is". The only way to get that information would be by accessing the ISP's database and finding out which customer had the lease on that particular IP at that particular time

Oh sorry, it was just that I gave four possibilities for doing this without the ISP's logs and you gave no counterpoints to any of them so I assumed you hadn't read them.

say_who_now? wrote: »

No, you won't.

And there are plenty of easily accessible IP to real address databases, for COMPANY registered addresses, not so much for individuals.

With Outlook and Skype, you already know who the individual is, and it's not too hard to Google their name, but if they have any sense, they won't have put their home address on the internet, so that still leaves you the problem of tying their IP address to their home address, LEGALLY remember?

If I use my dear old nana's internet connection to access my fake twitter and facebook profiles and spam the hell out of yours, then fill your e-mail inbox with spam, good luck to you trying to prove it was me, whether by illegal or legal means.

Now who's being naive?

The whois database gives the registered owner, it doesn't locate the street address of an IP address, although they may correspond.

I'm aware that for Outlook and Skype I already know who the individual is. That's the entire ****ing point. If I didn't know who the individual was then it would hardly be of any use to me would it?

I don't know if you're purposely trying to change the goalposts here but I don't intend to play along. I didn't say it was impossible to conceal your identity on the internet. I said that if an IP address was being used by one of my friends then I could probably work out who, just as happened in the blog post. You raised this as being impossible without accessing the ISPs logs. It isn't.

28064212

scamalert wrote: »

So what your using your relatives address,might be your neighbors wifi,in most cases that would track down you eventually to 30 meters radius

Stopped reading there, since you're talking utter nonsense. An IP address does not get you remotely close to 30 metres. It doesn't get you to 300 metres. It might get you to 3000m, if you're lucky

scamalert

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Did I ban you on this account? Or was it a previous account I banned you with? Or do you just hate all the mods?

I am not saying I don't believe it because it can't be done.

I have little interest in conversing with somebody who glosses over what I am actually asking just to get a petty dig in.

I am not referring to what can be done. I am familiar with the reality of what people can do with minimal information.

I am asking about this specific situation that the author of this blog describes where this white knight shows up and pulls a house address out of his hat in two sentences.

That's what I want more detail on.

What I am talking about is specifically getting your house address, exact location, from a dynamically assigned IP address with an expiring lease in a legal manner without requests from police to ISPs. That's what I am asking about.

And to be fair, even this would have required a situation where the police were contacted and ignored a death threat.

No,no no and no to the last three questions,as for isp giving address times have changed,a month ago i got a letter from eircom stating that i was downloading illegal music it stated my address,my name,house number,ip,time,torrent used,and what song was downloaded :pac: and it clearly stated eircom doesn't track their users in anyway

scamalert

scamalert wrote: »

No,no no and no to the last three questions,as for isp giving address times have changed,a month ago i got a letter from eircom stating that i was downloading illegal music it stated my address,my name,house number,ip,time,torrent used,and what song was downloaded :pac: and it clearly stated eircom doesn't track their users in anyway

LOL
Eircom don't
But the prick from the RIAA who's PC you downloaded from, does!!!:D

28064212

Zab wrote: »

Oh sorry, it was just that I gave four possibilities for doing this without the ISP's logs and you gave no counterpoints to any of them so I assumed you hadn't read them.

Apologies, I may have misread what you're saying, I thought you were saying Outlook etc could be used to get the IP address of the troll.

Are you saying that the "IT genius" got the IP address of the troll, then compared that address to IP addresses of all the blogger's emails etc? That seems like quite creative thinking by the IT guy, and doesn't match up too closely with what the blogger claimed

Gordon

Gordon wrote: »

If he's emailed (received) his neighbour, yeah.

28064212 wrote: »

Getting an IP address is trivial. Tracking that IP address to a real address is most definitely not

Not if he knows his neighbour's IP address.

stmol32

scamalert wrote: »

No,no no and no to the last three questions,as for isp giving address times have changed,a month ago i got a letter from eircom stating that i was downloading illegal music it stated my address,my name,house number,ip,time,torrent used,and what song was downloaded :pac: and it clearly stated eircom doesn't track their users in anyway

That's exactly the point everybody is trying to make to you.
Eircom sent you the letter because they have access to which Eircom customer is using which Eircom IP address.
A normal user can't access that information

scamalert

28064212 wrote: »

Stopped reading there, since you're talking utter nonsense. An IP address does not get you remotely close to 30 metres. It doesn't get you to 300 metres. It might get you to 3000m, if you're lucky

my mistake,true it only gives location to nearest exchange box,might be 30-50km now as i think,you know when you get them adds online with dating sites stating your town :rolleyes: ,but i stay with my opinion that its possible to do without guards being involved in all this.

28064212

Gordon wrote: »

Not if he knows his neighbour's IP address.

Seems to be what Zab was getting at all right. Conceivably possible, but doesn't quite match up with what the blogger claimed. And still requires quite a big leap of creative thinking by the IT genius to compare the troll IPs to email etc IPs, given that (IMO) the vast majority of trolls are not going to have any relationship whatsoever to the target outside of the trolling.

Hurricane Carter

It makes baby Jaysus cry when you think that this person is actually a grown man.

Green Diesel

28064212 wrote: »

At a conservative estimate, perhaps 0.00001% of residential houses in the country would have that set-up

0.00001% of 2,000,000 houses = 0.2 houses in the country :pac:

scamalert

28064212
the Op mentioned that he didn't track him down in one day,couple months or so,its enough to research where the most IPs are coming from.Then his friend came in,maybe fake website with root-kit attached to it,you need only one vulnerable open port to plant something like that,to further infiltrate into pc and eventually get names,and accounts used.

28064212

Green Diesel wrote: »

0.00001% of 2,000,000 houses = 0.2 houses in the country :pac:

Exactly As I said, a conservative estimate

scamalert wrote: »

28064212
the Op mentioned that he didn't track him down in one day,couple months or so,its enough to research where the most IPs are coming from.Then his friend came in,maybe fake website with root-kit attached to it,you need only one vulnerable open port to plant something like that,to further infiltrate into pc and eventually get names,and accounts used.

Root-kit? Open ports? Infiltrate? Stop talking nonsense. You clearly don't have much knowledge when it comes to computers, as evidenced by your claim of 30m from an IP address, and your surprise that your own ISP can find out what you're doing. When you're in a situation like this, you sit down, listen and see if you can learn something. Or possibly ask a question if you want further clarification. You do not go off spouting whatever marginally-relevant buzzwords you can think of

Zab

28064212 wrote: »

Are you saying that the "IT genius" got the IP address of the troll, then compared that address to IP addresses of all the blogger's emails etc? That seems like quite creative thinking by the IT guy, and doesn't match up too closely with what the blogger claimed

I don't know the blogger or his IT friend. All I can say is that if I took on the task I would have tried the methods I described, and other related ones, so from my point of view it isn't that much of a leap to think that he would too. The blogger himself is clearly not a techie and would likely only have a thin grasp on what his friend did.

M three

Story sounds like a load of bull****.

28064212

Zab wrote: »

I don't know the blogger or his IT friend. All I can say is that if I took on the task I would have tried the methods I described, and other related ones, so from my point of view it isn't that much of a leap to think that he would too. The blogger himself is clearly not a techie and would likely only have a thin grasp on what his friend did.

But you're talking about a situation where you know it's a friend who you're looking for. In the blogger's case, not only did they not know, but it would be extremely unlikely that it was a friend. As I said, that's quite the leap to make by the techie

humbert

Oh dear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

Maybe he is looking for another stalker.
Tell the world!!!!

28064212

humbert wrote: »

Oh dear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

"Oh dear" what?

Zab

28064212 wrote: »

But you're talking about a situation where you know it's a friend who you're looking for. In the blogger's case, not only did they not know, but it would be extremely unlikely that it was a friend. As I said, that's quite the leap to make by the techie

It's easier if I know for sure it's a friend, but we're going to have to disagree on how much of a leap it would be. This wasn't some random abuse on a message board. This guy was referencing his family and sending packages to his house. I would definitely be suspicious that there was another connection between the two, particularly as (going by the blog post) the abuse didn't seem to be related to anything in particular the blogger was writing and couple that with the fact that I wouldn't have much else to go on. Anyway, hopefully he can ask his techie friend to write up the experience, although if it did involve tracking emails to all his friends then he may be reticent to do so.

28064212

Zab wrote: »

It's easier if I know for sure it's a friend, but we're going to have to disagree on how much of a leap it would be.

Yes

scamalert

28064212 wrote: »

Exactly As I said, a conservative estimate


Root-kit? Open ports? Infiltrate? Stop talking nonsense. You clearly don't have much knowledge when it comes to computers, as evidenced by your claim of 30m from an IP address, and your surprise that your own ISP can find out what you're doing. When you're in a situation like this, you sit down, listen and see if you can learn something. Or possibly ask a question if you want further clarification. You do not go off spouting whatever marginally-relevant buzzwords you can think of

So according to you all the Admins/or ones studying IT are idiots who are trained to install windows-bravo.As for my situation since the day they signed that act with record companies i knew,that ill get some response or surprise from them,but not going defcon 5 to use proxy to hide myself as i downloaded stuff of internet for the last 10 years and not going to pay for anything that i dont like ,or download and delete program a day later.

28064212

scamalert wrote: »

So according to you all the Admins/or ones studying IT are idiots who are trained to install windows-bravo

And I really thought you'd take my advice and think before you posted. Apparently not

My name is URL

humbert wrote: »

Oh dear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

Ah ffs. It's the Gardai that come out of this looking the worst.

I hope the guy reported it to the Ombudsman.. the fact that he alleges he was told that the Gardai could do nothing about death threats been left on his doorstep.

Thud

scamalert wrote: »

So according to you all the Admins/or ones studying IT are idiots who are trained to install windows-bravo.As for my situation since the day they signed that act with record companies i knew,that ill get some response or surprise from them,but not going defcon 5 to use proxy to hide myself as i downloaded stuff of internet for the last 10 years and not going to pay for anything that i dont like ,or download and delete program a day later.

now they know you've been doing it for 10 years they will be able to track your IP address to your home and lock you up for it!!

Scamalert is fairly up on this stuff for an idiot who uses torrents.:pac:

scamalert

Bam Bam Mickey wrote: »

Scamalert is fairly up on this stuff for an idiot who uses torrents.:pac:

only idiot is you,down here,stick with itunes or whatever your choice is.

Wanderer2010

Very interesting post. Getting serious, how many people here would actually want to meet someone who was abusing them online with threats etc? Particulalry the men- yes, it might be satisfying to knock the crap out of them, but when push comes to shove, how many people would actually hurt the Troll? I thought the OP was very brave and I do hope that kid gets help..

say_who_now?

Bam Bam Mickey wrote: »

Scamalert is fairly up on this stuff for an idiot who STILL uses torrents.:pac:

FYP there Bam

Knasher

28064212 wrote: »

Stopped reading there, since you're talking utter nonsense. An IP address does not get you remotely close to 30 metres. It doesn't get you to 300 metres. It might get you to 3000m, if you're lucky

Well there was a couple of recent papers, this one in particular suggests it can get to within a median error distance of 690 meters (using route delay measurements). The paper is US centric so I've no idea how accurate the same measures would be in Ireland. I don't think that would be accurate enough to start throwing accusations, especially considering that the error is dependent on population density, so the most accurate location would also give you the greatest chance of accusing the wrong people.

If I had to put my money down (assuming that the whole not illegal bit is true), I'd say the most likely method is that they used HTML5s geolocation feature and were somehow able to entice their target into clicking the share my location button.

say_who_now?

Wanderer2010 wrote: »

Very interesting post. Getting serious, how many people here would actually want to meet someone who was abusing them online with threats etc? Particulalry the men- yes, it might be satisfying to knock the crap out of them, but when push comes to shove, how many people would actually hurt the Troll? I thought the OP was very brave and I do hope that kid gets help..

Tbh I wouldn't feel any better about myself knocking seven colors out of an attention seeking kid, and that's even assuming that the author themselves isn't just making this up to get attention, as it has already been picked up by the guardian (tbh I thought it was more daily fail type fodder myself), but I would certainly make sure the full rigors of the law were impressed upon him as the kind of vigilante justice of the author only encourages others to seek their own form of retribution for acts comitted upon them. In saying all that, not for a minute do I believe that the Gardai didn't take death threats seriously, and if they had been shown the same "manilla envelope" of evidence, I'm sure they would have investigated the case and found the perpetrator a hell of a lot quicker and through legal means than the author and his IT genius friend.

BaZmO*

humbert wrote: »

Oh dear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/day-confronted-troll

It's here too

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0926/breaking15.html?via=mr

I tell ya what, if the guy is lying, he's dug a very big hole for himself.

say_who_now?

Knasher wrote: »

Well there was a couple of recent papers, this one in particular suggests it can get to within a median error distance of 690 meters (using route delay measurements). The paper is US centric so I've no idea how accurate the same measures would be in Ireland.

Straight up Knasher, if I pull up goolge maps on my N8, it gets me to an accuracy of within 100 metres indoors using a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and mobile mast site triangulation. Pretty accurate you might think, until you realise that google street view will leave you in front of an apartment complex with over 100 apartments.

So then you think- "well I know the IP address, and I know the computer it came from". That's STILL no use to you without a specific house address, and you have no way of getting my house address. So even if you were to go round the hundred or so apartments with the electoral register (which we'll assume is up to date, to make things simple!), asking who lives there and crossing the names off (assuming again people won't tell you to naff off!), you still will only get the names of those living there over 18.

Therefore, there is no LEGAL way, you as an individual, can locate and identify a person simply from their IP address, let alone pin-point their home adress.

And that's also assuming that if you were to try illegal means to correlate the IP address with customer details, that the ISP is like eircom and keeps their customer database unencrypted and without reference numbers! :rolleyes:

humbert

BaZmO* wrote: »

It's here too

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0926/breaking15.html?via=mr

I tell ya what, if the guy is lying, he's dug a very big hole for himself.

Actually a quick google shows that it's in nearly every paper you care to mention. Some of them must have done a bit of fact checking. Still find it difficult to believe.

BaZmO*

say_who_now? wrote: »

Pretty accurate you might think, until you realise that google street view will leave you in front of an apartment complex with over 100 apartments.

That's assuming it's an apartment of course.

PogMoThoin

I have worked for a few years for an ISP. An Isp's IP address list or database is covered by the data protection act. Getting this information from an ISP requires Garda intervention and a court order. For someone on the ISP's staff having access to it and giving it out to a member of the public is a huge breach of the data protection act. There is no conceivable way it's possible to do legally just from a IP address.

Zab

say_who_now? wrote: »

Straight up Knasher, if I pull up goolge maps on my N8, it gets me to an accuracy of within 100 metres indoors using a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and mobile mast site triangulation. Pretty accurate you might think, until you realise that google street view will leave you in front of an apartment complex with over 100 apartments.

You can typically get within 30m via wifi alone, and you don't need to be on a phone to do it, any PC with a wifi card will suffice. Also, it would be within 30m of where one of my friends lives so you'd hardly have to be Einstein to make to connection. Furthermore, that wasn't even the method that Knasher was mentioning, and browsers ask before revealing your location.

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I have worked for a few years for an ISP. An Isp's IP address list or database is covered by the data protection act. Getting this information from an ISP requires Garda intervention and a court order. For someone on the ISP's staff having access to it and giving it out to a member of the public is a huge breach of the data protection act. There is no conceivable way it's possible to do legally just from a IP address.

No need to address the methods mentioned in the thread then, we'll just take your word for it.

UCDVet

Zab wrote: »

You can typically get within 30m via wifi alone, and you don't need to be on a phone to do it, any PC with a wifi card will suffice. Also, it would be within 30m of where one of my friends lives so you'd hardly have to be Einstein to make to connection. Furthermore, that wasn't even the method that Knasher was mentioning, and browsers ask before revealing your location.




No need to address the methods mentioned in the thread then, we'll just take your word for it.

Can you explain how that would work? I have a wifi card; does that mean anyone with my IP address can tell where I am, within 30m?

say_who_now?

BaZmO* wrote: »

That's assuming it's an apartment of course.

Well I was just using this as an example, where if I pull up a list of the Wi-Fi broadcasts around me, there are ten connections on UPC alone! So even with an HTML5 page with hidden code to get my location from my IP, this is only an APPROXIMATE location. It doesn't pinpoint me specifically and certainly doesn't give my home address. So even as one poster alluded to earlier, simply knowing their friend's name, even knowing their ISP their friend uses, and even assuming they used their real name and not a false one, does not give them their friend's actual home address.

PogMoThoin

Zab wrote: »

No need to address the methods mentioned in the thread then, we'll just take your word for it.

I've seen no valid methods. I've seen lots of posts from people with a very poor knowledge of networking talking up how it is possible though. If you feel you're knowledgeable to explain a method please do.

fasttalkerchat

Nice ending to a terrible story if its genuine but I somehow doubt it too.

Also AFAIK that can't be done legally without a court injunction which he claims not to have done... could have thought about his story before putting it online.

Knasher

say_who_now? wrote: »

Straight up Knasher, if I pull up goolge maps on my N8, it gets me to an accuracy of within 100 metres indoors using a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and mobile mast site triangulation. Pretty accurate you might think, until you realise that google street view will leave you in front of an apartment complex with over 100 apartments.

If you are indoors then you aren't using GPS, which has very poor signal penetration, if you were then it would by quite a bit more accurate, and the accuracy of WiFi positioning can vary wildly by location (for example at my workplace it is accurate to about 20 meters using WiFi alone).

That being said I was actually editing my comment when you posted yours to say that I don't think 690 meter would be accurate enough to start throwing accusations around, so I don't think that is what happened, I was just mentioning the paper because it was relevant to one of the earlier comments if not to the story itself.

However if you could pin the address down to a smallish location (say within 50 meters) by tricking the kid into clicking on the geo-location thing in HTML5 and you knew only one other person in that area. Then it might be reasonable to consider this person is the most likely candidate and it could also be quite easy to rule them out, even without tipping your hand (for example if they are on UPC where your IP almost never changes, then next time he is visiting just ask to use their internet and away you go).

say_who_now? wrote: »

Therefore, there is no LEGAL way, you as an individual, can locate and identify a person simply from their IP address, let alone pin-point their home adress.

I'll admit I'm making a lot of assumptions and probably most of the time you would fail to track people like this. All I'm saying is that it isn't beyond the realm of possibility that it could work the odd time. Maybe he is lying and he used illegal methods to track him, maybe this is just an attempt to drum up page hits, honestly I don't know and I also don't care.

say_who_now?

Zab wrote: »

You can typically get within 30m via wifi alone, and you don't need to be on a phone to do it, any PC with a wifi card will suffice. Also, it would be within 30m of where one of my friends lives so you'd hardly have to be Einstein to make to connection. Furthermore, that wasn't even the method that Knasher was mentioning, and browsers ask before revealing your location.

No, you'd have to be psychic!

Your approximate location.

UCDVet wrote: »

Can you explain how that would work? I have a wifi card; does that mean anyone with my IP address can tell where I am, within 30m?

Yes, but only if you're on your own in the middle of a very big field-

http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/getting-started-html5-geolocation

LostPassword

I can often identify a specific location from an IP address in minutes. The first step is to use traceroute to follow the IP address back across each hop in the route - many ISPs use geographically informative names to identify their routers, so it is often possible to identify the last router before the user's name - try it and see - you just have to type tracert [IP Address] on a command prompt. This allows you to identify the most local router to the user's home which allows you to greatly narrow your range of possibilities. Even when non-informative names are used, you can often find identifying information on the net (network graphs, previous uses of the same IP address logged elsewhere, etc, etc).

There are loads of ways that you can further investigate who the user is - many users run poorly secured network services (e.g. web servers, media servers, the routers themselves, etc, etc) and these have often got informative names (e.g. JAMES-DILLON-PC) which you can get at with a little bit of knowledge of common and well known low end protocols such as UPnP.

Of course many of these services are unsecured or trivially unsecured and you can simply walk into them and look around the network to see what traffic is going on. That would be questionably legal though.

In general, I find that, more often than not, unless the user knows what they are doing (<0.00001%) somebody who understands network security will be able to narrow the range of possibilities down to such an extent that the suspect pops out fairly quickly.

say_who_now?

LostPassword wrote: »

I can often identify a specific location from an IP address in minutes. The first step is to use traceroute to follow the IP address back across each hop in the route - many ISPs use geographically informative names to identify their routers, so it is often possible to identify the last router before the user's name - try it and see - you just have to type tracert [IP Address] on a command prompt. This allows you to identify the most local router to the user's home which allows you to greatly narrow your range of possibilities. Even when non-informative names are used, you can often find identifying information on the net (network graphs, previous uses of the same IP address logged elsewhere, etc, etc).

There are loads of ways that you can further investigate who the user is - many users run poorly secured network services (e.g. web servers, media servers, the routers themselves, etc, etc) and these have often got informative names (e.g. JAMES-DILLON-PC) which you can get at with a little bit of knowledge of common and well known low end protocols such as UPnP.

Of course many of these services are unsecured or trivially unsecured and you can simply walk into them and look around the network to see what traffic is going on. That would be questionably legal though.

In general, I find that, more often than not, unless the user knows what they are doing (<0.00001%) somebody who understands network security will be able to narrow the range of possibilities down to such an extent that the suspect pops out fairly quickly.

And you'd have the book thrown at you for invasion of privacy and using illegal means to obtain personally identifiable information. Still won't give you a person's home address from their IP either. The author as Bazmo quite rightly said, has dug themselves an awful hole, first by suggesting that the Gardai do not take death threats and malicious intimidation seriously, and then by suggesting that his IT genius friend managed to obtain confidential information by "perfectly legal" methods.

Zab

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Zab wrote: »

No need to address the methods mentioned in the thread then, we'll just take your word for it.

I've seen no valid methods. I've seen lots of posts from people with a very poor knowledge of networking talking up how it is possible though. If you feel you're knowledgeable to explain a method please do.

Please address my posts in particular

UCDVet

The only way I see this being possible is if they setup a bogus website; and the troll connected to it using a smart phone or tablet with GPS enabled AND voluntarily allowed it to disclose their location -or- if they suspected it was a friend and created an elaborate scheme of giving each friend a different link to visit on a site they controlled and recording the IP address of each friend in that fashion.

I'm pretty convinced it's impossible to reliably get an address from an IP address. I'm not saying you can't find someone hosting a webserver on their machine that has their home address on it; but I'm saying I don't believe it will work for the vast, vast, vast majority of IP addresses.

What Is My IP - WhatIsMyIP.com
Your IP Address Is: 109.255.10.90
No Proxy Detected

But I'd love for someone to walk us all through the process and put and end to the discussion.

Zab

UCDVet wrote: »

Zab wrote: »

You can typically get within 30m via wifi alone, and you don't need to be on a phone to do it, any PC with a wifi card will suffice. Also, it would be within 30m of where one of my friends lives so you'd hardly have to be Einstein to make to connection. Furthermore, that wasn't even the method that Knasher was mentioning, and browsers ask before revealing your location.




No need to address the methods mentioned in the thread then, we'll just take your word for it.

Can you explain how that would work? I have a wifi card; does that mean anyone with my IP address can tell where I am, within 30m?

No, this method actually doesn't involve your ip address. Using a database of known wifi network locations combined with the networks your wireless card can see, your browser can work out roughly where it's located. Web pages can request this information from your browser but it's usually run by you first.

UCDVet

Zab wrote: »

No, this method actually doesn't involve your ip address. Using a database of known wifi network locations combined with the networks your wireless card can see, your browser can work out roughly where it's located. Web pages can request this information from your browser but it's usually run by you first.

Do you have a particular implementation you feel is more accurate than others? If you're talking about the generic HTML5 based geolocation stuff; I was under the impression it was far less accurate than you're saying.

http://html5demos.com/geo <--- Says I'm on Dame Street, Dublin if I use Chrome.

The same site, in Internet Explorer, says I'm on Meispl Road in Dublin.

In both cases I have to voluntarily allow the site to collect my geolocation information (which I'd be unlikely to do if I were in the middle of criminally harassing someone). And both of those locations are really far from my actual location.