GeoLocation

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Geolocation is determining (approx.) location on the earth, using one of several techniques. There are Privacy issues involved.

Contents

GeoIP

GeoIP refers to determining approx. location based on a database of IP(v4 or v6) addresses. It is easy enough to fake using a variety of tunneling, VPN and other techniques.

Local

Performing a GeoIP lookup against a local copy of a geoip database mitigates against an external service provider gaining visibility as to what you are looking up.

Commandline

geoiplookup is a commandline utility from MaxMind (and packaged for Debian/Ubuntu as "geoip-bin") which uses a local database:

% geoiplookup gnosia.anu.edu.au
GeoIP Country Edition: AU, Australia

Add ons

FlagFox is a Mozilla Firefox add-on that displays the flag of the country of origin of the IP address of the web-server. It relies on a local database that needs to be updated regularly in order to provide more reliable results.

Services

Using an external GeoIP lookup service exposes your queries to external visibility, which could be used for a variety of purposes, including marketing.

GPS

Global Positioning System is one of several satellite-based systems for more accurately determining position on, or above/below, the Earth.

GPS is "passive" in the sense that there is no need for data to flow out of the GPS device to determine position.

This is not the case for Assisted GPS (A-GPS), where an out-going data connection is also used, and so the position of the A-GPS receiver is quite visible to external entities (a mobile phone provider, for instance).

External Links

  • openBmap.org "a free and open map of wireless communicating objects"