GEO IP: THE ORBITAL EYE OF SAURON

Posted by freemexy on October 19th, 2019

GEO IP: THE ORBITAL EYE OF SAURON
Those who have frequented conspiracy theory chat rooms in the late nineties might remember the idea that ‘’the Government’’ will place us all in FEMA camps and place a chip inside us that will track our every movement. Well, little did they know that we will be paying good money to carry a geo IP tracker around in our pocket willingly, and would become quite angry when it’s not working so that we can call an Uber. Qwer432
While ranting about Geo-tracking and Geo IP location might sound paranoid, there is actually a good reason why you might want to have your location services masked, or blocked entirely.
Needing to type-in your location when ordering an Uber or Dominos is a small price to pay for salvation as you will be saved from spreading your private data and personal IP address everywhere.
Thankfully, masking your GeoIP location is as easy as hiding your IP. If you are using a VPN, you can connect through a foreign server and exchange your geographic location to the one of said server. And, if you are using a premium VPN service, you can even connect your whole home to a VPN router, protecting all of your devices.
How IP Addresses Show Your Geographic Location?
An IP address works in a similar way as an address for a physical residence. Not to enter the dot-decimal explanation too much, the further you go down the numbers the closer to your home you will come, from the main subnet to your internet service provider, to your home modem. And, there is a non-conspiracy explanation for that.
Before we had personal names and brand names for web places, there were numbers. In the early days of the internet, it wasn’t enough to type in a part of a website name and let Google finish it off, but you had to input all of the data needed. This included the full IP address, as well as some additional data.
While the UI for this system has been changed for a DNS naming system, the IP addresses are still given in the same order.
If you are using mobile, the address will not show your exact location, but rather the tower or access point you are connecting to.
Thankfully, if you know what is a VPN
, you will be able to protect yourself quite easily from all risk connected to geolocation data.
What Is Geo IP Used for?
Knowing where people are when they access the internet can be quite beneficial and is the sort of data companies and governments fight over regularly.
For which purpose your IP location will be used will depend heavily on the approach your government has towards sharing this sort of information with others. For governments and countries that value privacy, ISPs will be able to share your location when subpoenaed by a court.
This might be because there is a suspicion that a crime has been committed, or is investigating some type of fraud. Companies like MaxMind even specialize in fraud prevention by using IP geolocation data.
Additionally, companies might use the geographic significance of IP addresses to serve targeted ads, as well as pricing. For instance, companies might market bottled water only to western Arizona, and for a higher price, as they know, it is an arid place with low precipitation.
Finally, the Geo IP will be used to provide you with specific civil services. If you are contacting an emergency number online, your IP will be used to determine which local emergency option you will get.
Technical Reasons
Apart from all of the issues IP location might have for our cybersecurity, there are the technical reasons why they exist.
Primarily, it is the best way for your computer to be able to find a web place quickly and without flaking too often. Your modem will then present its own IP address and thus gain access to the website, server, app, or some other data stored online.
Additionally, it eases the nomenclature of devices quite a bit. In any other case, there would be a need for a global regulating body to give out specific addresses, which is impossible as the Imperium of Man is not yet a thing.
With an IP address, each specific region can get a predetermined number of codes, bought by the ISPs and companies, and distributed to their customers.
Legitimate Reasons
In addition to the computers needing your IP address to communicate and your IP location to know where to send the packets, there are also some valid reasons why a company or a public service might want to see and store your geo IP.
First of all, if you are subscribed to a local service, the service provider should be able to ensure that you are, in fact, local. This doesn’t include Uber, as that service works via GPS location, but does include local news.
An important feature that uses IP information are Amber Alerts that help find missing children that are missing in an exact location.
Finally, some civic and legal options are possible with geotargeting, such as voting and expressing your opinion about local and municipal matters. Allowing only IP addresses from a specific geographic location to cast their vote will prevent foreign meddling.