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Internet Mapping Glitch Turned a Random Kansas Farm into a Digital Hell

posted by martyb on Monday April 11 2016, @03:53AM   
from the this-is-not-the-address-you-are-looking-for dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An hour's drive from Wichita, Kansas, in a little town called Potwin, there is a 360-acre piece of land with a very big problem. The acreage is quiet and remote: a farm, a pasture, an old orchard, two barns, some hog shacks and a two-story house. It's the kind of place you move to if you want to get away from it all.

But instead of being a place of respite, the people who live on Joyce Taylor's land find themselves in a technological horror story. For the last decade, Taylor and her renters have been visited by all kinds of mysterious trouble. They've been accused of being identity thieves, spammers, scammers and fraudsters. They've been visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children. They've found people scrounging around in their barn. The renters have been doxxed, their names and addresses posted on the internet by vigilantes. Once, someone left a broken toilet in the driveway as a strange, indefinite threat.

All that and more because the farm's geographical coordinates where naively chosen as the default location in a widely used database of IP address to physical location mappings.

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Original Submission

• It's Geolocation, why does anyone trust it? It's Geolocation, why does anyone trust it? (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2016, @04:24AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2016, @04:24AM (#329898)

  Everyone knows geolocation is unreliable shit, especially MaxMind.

  I blame all the morons who do what they're told "because the computer said so."

  For their mindless blind obedience, may emergency workers die ironically in a fire.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+4
  Insightful=4, Total=4
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		4

• Re:It's Geolocation, why does anyone trust it? Re:It's Geolocation, why does anyone trust it? (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 11 2016, @04:51AM

  by anubi (2828) on Monday April 11 2016, @04:51AM (#329908) Journal

  I tried to geolocate on myself...

  Whatismyipaddress.com thinks I live in LA.

  Google Maps think I live in Tacoma, WA.

  Neither is correct.

  With all the subnetting and subletting of internet access, you may find where the ISP is connecting into the net, but only God and your ISP know much where YOU are!

  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  Parent

  • Re:It's Geolocation, why does anyone trust it? (Score: 2, Funny) by zoefff on Monday April 11 2016, @06:50AM

    by zoefff (5470) on Monday April 11 2016, @06:50AM (#329924)

    Which finally puts them on equal footing.

    Parent