Fixing Google geolocation screwups
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama. Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well. On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
The list on http://nanog.peeringdb.com/index.php/GeoIP is useful, especially if several GeoIP databases return incorrect locations. -- Arzhel On Wed, Apr 8, 2015, at 10:42, Fred Hollis wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
You might try here: https://www.maxmind.com/en/correction -A On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Fred Hollis <fred@web2objects.com> wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
No, Google has their own internal system. Doubt MaxMind will help out. This discussions and others like it may lead you in the right direction: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/fkyem9xUKOQ On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
You might try here: https://www.maxmind.com/en/correction
-A
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Fred Hollis <fred@web2objects.com> wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.
maxmind is the company that does it for speedtest.net So if you've ever wondered why your IP blocks still show up as coming from your upstream and not you, well, that's why. /hard_learned_trade_secret On 04/07/2015 03:17 PM, Blair Trosper wrote:
No, Google has their own internal system. Doubt MaxMind will help out.
This discussions and others like it may lead you in the right direction: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/fkyem9xUKOQ
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
You might try here: https://www.maxmind.com/en/correction
-A
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Fred Hollis <fred@web2objects.com> wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
I figure they all collaborate. I updated one of our IPs with MaxMind and a few weeks later Google was fixed. Of course that could be because half the staff here carry tiny GPS-enabled Google location reporting devices in their pocket too... -A On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Blair Trosper <blair.trosper@gmail.com> wrote:
No, Google has their own internal system. Doubt MaxMind will help out.
This discussions and others like it may lead you in the right direction: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/fkyem9xUKOQ
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
You might try here: https://www.maxmind.com/en/correction
-A
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Fred Hollis <fred@web2objects.com> wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
It wouldn't hurt to correct it with MaxMind (a great product), but you'd probably have better results dealing with Google directly. If you have Google Apps, you've got support, and that would be one way to go about getting it addressed. On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
I figure they all collaborate. I updated one of our IPs with MaxMind and a few weeks later Google was fixed.
Of course that could be because half the staff here carry tiny GPS-enabled Google location reporting devices in their pocket too...
-A
No, Google has their own internal system. Doubt MaxMind will help out.
This discussions and others like it may lead you in the right direction: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/fkyem9xUKOQ
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
You might try here: https://www.maxmind.com/en/correction
-A
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Fred Hollis <fred@web2objects.com>
wrote:
Thanks for sending this to the list: We have the very same issue as well (both IPv4+IPv6). If someone knows the magic button to solve this, please contact me as well.
On 08.04.2015 at 00:26 John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Blair Trosper <blair.trosper@gmail.com> wrote: that
the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Blair Trosper <blair.trosper@gmail.com> writes:
MaxMind (a great product)
I've heard anecdotal accounts of MaxMind intentionally marking all address blocks assigned to a VPN vendor as "open proxy" even when advised repeatedly that the disputed addresses (a) had no VPN services running on them either inbound or outbound, and (b) in fact were web servers for the company's payment system, or mail servers for their corporate email. Kind of reminiscent of dealing with certain RBLs for whom "personal beef" was enough reason to list an address. So, folks might want to temper the "great product" comment with this anti-endorsement. -r
On Apr 8, 2015 7:19 AM, "Rob Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:
Blair Trosper <blair.trosper@gmail.com> writes:
MaxMind (a great product)
I've heard anecdotal accounts of MaxMind intentionally marking all address blocks assigned to a VPN vendor as "open proxy" even when advised repeatedly that the disputed addresses (a) had no VPN services running on them either inbound or outbound, and (b) in fact were web servers for the company's payment system, or mail servers for their corporate email.
I would wonder if these apps didn't have issues that allowed web proxy to the world. Maybe MaxMind is doing something wrong or maybe they're seeing the result of malicious activities and classifying from that.
shawn wilson <ag4ve.us@gmail.com> writes:
On Apr 8, 2015 7:19 AM, "Rob Seastrom" <[[rs@seastrom.com]]> wrote:
Blair Trosper <[[blair.trosper@gmail.com]]> writes:
MaxMind (a great product)
I've heard anecdotal accounts of MaxMind intentionally marking all address blocks assigned to a VPN vendor as "open proxy" even when advised repeatedly that the disputed addresses (a) had no VPN services running on them either inbound or outbound, and (b) in fact were web servers for the company's payment system, or mail servers for their corporate email.
I would wonder if these apps didn't have issues that allowed web proxy to the world. Maybe MaxMind is doing something wrong or maybe they're seeing the result of malicious activities and classifying from that.
That was not the conclusion that one would draw from their replies. -r
We operate IPv6 tunnel broker tb.netassist.ua, so /48 from our /32 is spread all around the world. Google change geo of our WHOLE /32 from time to time to another cute random place ;) One time Google decided we are in IRAN and block a lot of content as "not available in your country" o_O Unfortunately, there is no "magic button" to fix it, as well as no human contact in Google to discuss it. I'm still trying to find a good solution, but not found it. On 04/08/15 01:26, John Levine wrote:
A friend of mine lives in Alabama and has business service from at&t. But Google thinks he's in France. We've checked for various possibilities of VPNs and proxies and such, and it's pretty clear that the Goog's geolocation for addresses around 99.106.185.0/24 is screwed up. Bing and other services correctly find him in Alabama.
Poking around I see lots of advice about how to use Google's geolocation data, but nothing on how to update it. Anyone know the secret? TIA
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
On 2015-04-08 13:31, Max Tulyev wrote:
We operate IPv6 tunnel broker tb.netassist.ua, so /48 from our /32 is spread all around the world. Google change geo of our WHOLE /32 from time to time to another cute random place ;) One time Google decided we are in IRAN and block a lot of content as "not available in your country" o_O Unfortunately, there is no "magic button" to fix it, as well as no human contact in Google to discuss it. I'm still trying to find a good solution, but not found it.
Do check: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-google-self-published-geofeeds-02 That draft also contains folks to kick who wrote it. Or more details on how SixXS uses that: https://www.sixxs.net/faq/misc/?faq=geolocation It is a hard problem unfortunately as there are a variety of reasons why content owners perform Geolocation (language detection / Content restrictions etc). For most organizations "Geolocation" all comes down to "IP Protection" (Stupid Property aka "Content", not Internet Protocol). Hence, if you have a /32 IPv6 assigned to the Ukraine (which is already considered a shady country by most unfortunately for you) and then start offering VPN services, you'll likely just end up blocked in most of these "IP protecting networks" as folks just think you are trying to circumvent their great and awesome IP Protection strategies. That stated, properly providing a WHOIS entry for each prefix (inetnum/inet6num) is a good idea as that kind of indicates that that prefix is fixed in that location and not just moving around. As for Google, well, they have the method described above, but as they are primarily a HTTP company, they could just detect Language setting by the HTTP Accept-Language header. For YouTube etc they are in the same boat as everybody else: IP Protection. (property not network). In the end, having a prefix per country/region is the correct way to go. Do make sure though that you do not show any foreign address in the whois data (even if that is the correct entity that the prefix is registered under) otherwise that whole prefix will suddenly be blocked by for instance Netflix as "it is foreign"... Though Netflix always considers VPNs as a bad thing, ignoring the fact that for some folks that is the only real way to get a reasonable Internet experience. That all said: Restricting content based on location is complete and utter nonsense in 2015. The world is global, people want to pay for content and the content owners just don't allow people to pay for it. We all know what the end result of that is ;) Greets, Jeroen
That all said: Restricting content based on location is complete and utter nonsense in 2015. The world is global, people want to pay for content and the content owners just don't allow people to pay for it.
Globalisation is for your corporate lords and masters to buy labour and raw materials where they're cheap. If mere peons try to buy goods and services in the same way, expect to be crushed by the best legislation money can buy :( Regards, Tim.
Globalisation only works if network abuse and network contacts follow best practice and engage. Else trade blocks and network country blocks are done and remain in place until certain countries ethically/practically do the right thing. Colin
On 8 Apr 2015, at 13:17, Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
That all said: Restricting content based on location is complete and utter nonsense in 2015. The world is global, people want to pay for content and the content owners just don't allow people to pay for it.
Globalisation is for your corporate lords and masters to buy labour and raw materials where they're cheap.
If mere peons try to buy goods and services in the same way, expect to be crushed by the best legislation money can buy :(
Regards, Tim.
On 04/08/15 14:56, Jeroen Massar wrote:
That stated, properly providing a WHOIS entry for each prefix (inetnum/inet6num) is a good idea as that kind of indicates that that prefix is fixed in that location and not just moving around.
[skip]
Do make sure though that you do not show any foreign address in the whois data (even if that is the correct entity that the prefix is registered under)
Seems that it is contrary to each other ;) I thought to do something like automated whois query on tunnel destination and put that (geo)data to each /48 inet6num tunnelled. But as I don't believe it will help, so priority of that task is low and not yet realized.
participants (12)
-
Aaron C. de Bruyn -
Arzhel Younsi -
Blair Trosper -
Colin Johnston -
Fred Hollis -
Jeroen Massar -
John Levine -
Josh Reynolds -
Max Tulyev -
Rob Seastrom -
shawn wilson -
Tim Franklin