# Internet adverts know my location help?



## joec (Nov 2, 2005)

Hi all,
i have recently notice that a lot of internet adverts seem to know my rough location.
For example if i go to a site with adult friend finder adverts the advert says find friends in Glasgow area and shows a map of the area.

Can anyone tell me how they get this info and how to delete the cookies or what ever it is they have attached themselves to.

Thanks
Joec


----------



## Maggi200 (Aug 21, 2009)

I noticed having followed a link to halfords from this site to something recently, adverts on certain pages have changed themselves to that specific item and relating items from halfords. It's scary how much info is available to these companies through cookies etc. It's your IP address that will be giving it away though


----------



## Guest (Jan 22, 2010)

Yes, a company you have bought or registered from has sold your address details, either that, or if you have a static ISP then your ISP has assigned your address with that IP.


----------



## Maggi200 (Aug 21, 2009)

I had one that popped up the other day asking if I wanted to meet some minger in Essex for *something* even though I'm in Hertfordshire, close enough I guess. Was actually on the website though not on my pc before someone says adware


----------



## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

My norton security picks up 'low risk' tracking cookies all the time, evertime I am about to shut down the computer I run a quick scan and it always picks up two or three and deletes them. I wonder are theese the things you are after?


----------



## Guest (Jan 22, 2010)

Extremely unlikely, like norton says, they are low risk. I wouldn't waste your time running a quick scan for them.


----------



## joec (Nov 2, 2005)

maggi112 said:


> I noticed having followed a link to halfords from this site to something recently, adverts on certain pages have changed themselves to that specific item and relating items from halfords. It's scary how much info is available to these companies through cookies etc. It's your IP address that will be giving it away though


Yeh i thought that the other day and put it down to coincidence



G220 said:


> Yes, a company you have bought or registered from has sold your address details, either that, or if you have a static ISP then your ISP has assigned your address with that IP.


Would a static isp be like a fixed home connection i.e bt, sky or the likes


----------



## Maggi200 (Aug 21, 2009)

Anyone clever enough can tell where you are through your IP, otherwise hackers would never be caught etc, think about the us government tracking people down and trying to execute them or whatever that scottish dude is doing. They had to find him someway, IP address would be the means I guess


----------



## Guest (Jan 22, 2010)

Sorry, I meant static IP. A static IP means your IP address does not change everytime you reconnect, opposite to Dynamic, which usually changes every time you reconnect.

ISPs used to quite like dynamic IPs at one point as it meant they could have a smaller address pool as not everyone was connected at once, with broadband and greater demand for a non-changing IP more are starting to use static. It is very likely my first point which is why the location is local, as even if you did have a static IP, more often than not the lookup of the IP is your ISPs address.


----------



## Guest (Jan 22, 2010)

maggi112 said:


> Anyone clever enough can tell where you are through your IP, otherwise hackers would never be caught etc, think about the us government tracking people down and trying to execute them or whatever that scottish dude is doing. They had to find him someway, IP address would be the means I guess


No they can't, I really don't want to sound rude but if you understood a bit more about how "the internet" works as such, you would realise that is not true.


----------



## Maggi200 (Aug 21, 2009)

Yeah I would guess most peoples would remain the same until something changed hardware related due to broadband being connected most of the time, or at least it's supposed to be. BT seem to dig ours up and break it every other week


----------



## Nanoman (Jan 17, 2009)

You automatically broadcast your Operating System, Internet Browser, ISP & rough location amongst other things. 

You wouldn't believe how smart some websites are at using cookies to present content you're most interested in. 

I wouldn't worry about it too much mate. Just use decent anti-virus such as AVG Free and run a spyware scanner such as ad-aware occasionally.


----------



## jamest (Apr 8, 2008)

G220 said:


> No they can't, I really don't want to sound rude but if you understood a bit more about how "the internet" works as such, you would realise that is not true.


Using an IP address you can get a rough location for most people and 90%+ of the time you will get the correct city.

Do not worry, you are not in any danger it is normal with scripts getting smarter.


----------



## Nanoman (Jan 17, 2009)

jamest said:


> Using an IP address you can get a rough location for most people and 90%+ of the time you will get the correct city.
> 
> Do not worry, you are not in any danger it is normal with scripts getting smarter.


Yeah, G220 might want to double check his statement.

This would be a good place to start. It did sound a bit rude - esp when you're wrong. :thumb: I'm sure you'll be forgiven.



> How accurate is GeoLocation?
> Geolocation in general is the practice of determining the physical, real world location of a person, device or subject matter using digital information processed through the Internet or other electronic means of communication.
> 
> A growing trend in geolocation is deriving the city, ZIP code or region from which a person is or has connected to the World Wide Web by using their device's IP address or that of a wireless access points, such as those offered by coffee houses.
> ...


----------



## Guest (Jan 23, 2010)

jamest said:


> Using an IP address you can get a rough location for most people and 90%+ of the time you will get the correct city.
> 
> Do not worry, you are not in any danger it is normal with scripts getting smarter.


Sorry, but that is not correct James, the majority of ISPs in the UK, if you do a lookup of their IP address, it will be their ISPs address, this is very often not the correct city. This is reffering to consumer internet connections, perhaps if you took business and government IP ranges into account, 90% might be more accurate, but I would still suspect it would be less than 90%. This is mainly because of how the infrastructure in the UK is setup.



grantwils said:


> Yeah, G220 might want to double check his statement.
> 
> This would be a good place to start. It did sound a bit rude - esp when you're wrong. :thumb: I'm sure you'll be forgiven.


As I said before, I suggest you read up a bit about TCP/IP, how internet routing works, and also asked an ISP information about they hold about a customers traffic. If I was to give you my IP address, it the address would be Rochdale, if you wanted to find out exactly where I lived, you would either have to be part of an authority with enough power to ask Zen Internet my actual address, or you would have to hack their systems to find out where I lived.

*If you also had paid attention to that quote that you hastily looked on for on the internet, you would see it is referring to America, it almost exclusively does not apply to the UK as our IP addresses are managed in a completely different way and under slightly different stipulations.*

In addition, if I was to use an anonymous proxy originating from a country which does not actively keep logs of connections, you would be pretty much stuck.

The "scottish dude" as the other person put it hacked into the military systems using his own internet connection on a whim, so it was a simple matter of the FBI (or whoever) writing a letter to his ISP and requesting his address.

I don't need lessons on how the internet works thank you.

The fact you think ad-aware is decent protection clearly shows you don't know what you are on about.


----------



## jamest (Apr 8, 2008)

Sorry G220, but a lot of IP addresses can be put down to individual cities if the right data is held. With wireless routers becoming more and more popular most people end up keeping their IP address as if it was static even though it is dynamic.

A lot of UK IP addresses can be brought to a city be in the city you are in or a local one, very few are limited to the ISP. Obviously different websites will differ depending on the data they have available for IP addresses but for the most part they are quite accurate.

For example, infosniper can pick out my home city as well as my works.

I am a PHP developer and I know the information that I can get from people based on their IP and for the most part it IS accurate.


----------



## Guest (Jan 23, 2010)

It is much less than 90% James - seriously. American IP addresses often point to the correct city perhaps, but not in the UK. Many people struggle to keep their routers synchronised for several days on average so the IP data would be rendered useless in a very short time, if they had entered it into a website which sold the information. This quickly eliminates this possibility to pretty much everyone who has a Dynamic IP. Infact they probably dont bother collecting the information if it is in a dynamic range.

Website you posted in question has my IP address in Rochdale, and I have entered my details into enough websites on my static IP. Have you actually looked up your IP address on the whois database and checked whether it points your actual address anyway?

As it happens I am happy to argue with you, but not with people who don't actually know much about computers and are just basing this information on what people, magazines, and films, have told them.


----------



## Guest (Jan 23, 2010)

In addition back to the OP it is possible that your ISP are participating in a service called "Phorm" - I would be inclined to write to them asking if they are currently taking part in this.


----------



## Nanoman (Jan 17, 2009)

G220 said:


> Sorry, but that is not correct James, the majority of ISPs in the UK, if you do a lookup of their IP address, it will be their ISPs address, this is very often not the correct city. This is reffering to consumer internet connections, perhaps if you took business and government IP ranges into account, 90% might be more accurate, but I would still suspect it would be less than 90%. This is mainly because of how the infrastructure in the UK is setup.
> 
> As I said before, I suggest you read up a bit about TCP/IP, how internet routing works, and also asked an ISP information about they hold about a customers traffic. If I was to give you my IP address, it the address would be Rochdale, if you wanted to find out exactly where I lived, you would either have to be part of an authority with enough power to ask Zen Internet my actual address, or you would have to hack their systems to find out where I lived.
> 
> ...


Yes it is based on America and other countries with a similar set-up. You initially said...


G220 said:


> No they can't, I really don't want to sound rude but if you understood a bit more about how "the internet" works as such, you would realise that is not true.


In response to this...


maggi112 said:


> Anyone clever enough can tell where you are through your IP, otherwise hackers would never be caught etc, think about the us government tracking people down and trying to execute them or whatever that scottish dude is doing. They had to find him someway, IP address would be the means I guess


The truth is anyone clever enough CAN find out (roughly) where you are using your IP address. Whether it is legal or not is another matter.

As for your comment saying I don't know what i'm on about a BSc and several years experience say otherwise.
As for adaware 345,410,855 downloads from 1 website alone says something about it. It's a good easy tool for joe public to use to get rid of basic tracking cookies etc. Much better than forking out for norton and mcafee's crap that does more harm than good.

I'm not going to respond any further on this thread as it's off topic & pointless.

To the OP - as said before there's nowt much to worry about.


----------



## Caledoniandream (Oct 9, 2009)

If i have been informed well, is it possible to look back to wich "phone exchange" it;'s coming from (these are the little boxes in an area where all the phone lines come together) so it seem to be easy possible to track you to a certain area. 
If you try certain "speedcheckers" on Internet you will see that they get very close to tell where your signal is coming from. 
It work nearly as easy as number reconizing. 
Mobile internet is a doodle to track people, we use it to track our trucks in Europe because it's cheaper than internet and it gives us the nearest "exchange" point (sender/reciever unit) 
How do you think they track people in certain cases (child porn, and teror groups) 
The only disadvantage what they have is that there is so many people on internet that they have to look for the needle in the haystack, but certain words can trigger it and hopla somebody is in the picture. 
Realise that your moves are more than a couple of times a day are tracked. 
Big Brother is watching you........:lol:the whole Big family is watching you aswel.


----------



## Guest (Jan 23, 2010)

Caledoniandream said:


> If i have been informed well, is it possible to look back to wich "phone exchange" it;'s coming from (these are the little boxes in an area where all the phone lines come together) so it seem to be easy possible to track you to a certain area.


Nope, the IP session is ended at your ISP, the route it takes from there is not traceable as the PPP session is tunneled within BTs network. If you notice speedtest.net looks up your IP address using the WHOIS database so will more often than not return your ISPs headquarters (usually in london). Of course your ISP could find this out if asked, but since they will have your address on file there would be no point.


> Mobile internet is a doodle to track people, we use it to track our trucks in Europe because it's cheaper than internet and it gives us the nearest "exchange" point (sender/reciever unit)


I will take your word for that, I have no real knowledge of mobile internet, I have no problems admitting that.


> How do you think they track people in certain cases (child porn, and teror groups)


It is much much harder than you think for them to track people, usually with child pornography it is because they have entered their address details into said website, or credit card numbers, when the site holding the information is taken down, the information is recoered and that is how they are caught.

Or yes, if they have gathered the IP address from the server logs when they recover it, if they get an IP they can take it to the ISP and ask for information about who was assigned with that IP at that time, this takes time, joe moron like me and you cannot just go asking ISPs for addresses of who was using an IP at a certain time. It would be extremely difficult for them to intercept the session in transit, especially if it is encrypted.

Often, if they are smart and use proxies based in countries such as china, or several proxies in succession, they are often not caught by IP in the end but often by undercovers infiltrating the websites and finding out their details by effectively asking them.


> Big Brother is watching you........:lol:the whole Big family is watching you aswel.


Oh yes, no doubt about that at all, and it is getting worse, people should stand up to it more but unfortunately they do not. I do know of several people who have made provisions to move their email servers to outside of the UK now because of the proposed legislation for them to be all held for 2 years by law.


----------



## Guest (Jan 23, 2010)

And if you care about your security, leave facebook, myspace twitter etc etc


----------



## jamest (Apr 8, 2008)

matt1263 said:


> And if you care about your security, leave facebook, myspace twitter etc etc


If you care about security move to a remote island with no electronics.


----------



## Top_Gun (Dec 7, 2009)

jamest said:


> If you care about security move to a remote island with no electronics.


And be better off messing with some pirates with old rusty AK-47s?


----------



## jamest (Apr 8, 2008)

Top_Gun said:


> And be better off messing with some pirates with old rusty AK-47s?


The Government have informed the UK that Internet pirates are pure evil, much worse than the Somalian pirates.


----------



## konthelion (Jan 25, 2010)

*Wireless Geolocation is even scarier*

If you think that being able to track you to your city is bad, wait till all the browsers implement the Wireless Geolocation API.

Firefox already has this feature but you have to consent for the browser to send your info to Google.

Here an article http://www.ip2location.com/html5geolocationapi.aspx about that and it also has a demo which you can try in Firefox. When I tried it, it located me to within 100 metres. Scared the crap out of me.


----------



## Puntoboy (Jun 30, 2007)

It's not always static IPs that give your location. Dynamically assigned ones do as well.


----------



## Nanoman (Jan 17, 2009)

konthelion said:


> If you think that being able to track you to your city is bad, wait till all the browsers implement the Wireless Geolocation API.
> 
> Firefox already has this feature but you have to consent for the browser to send your info to Google.
> 
> Here an article http://www.ip2location.com/html5geolocationapi.aspx about that and it also has a demo which you can try in Firefox. When I tried it, it located me to within 100 metres. Scared the crap out of me.


I just did that and it's got my house right in the middle of the map!!!! It's not even covering a whole area - it's just my street and the street next to me. That must be within 100-200 metres! Scary as fook!

All i had to do was click the wee box at the top of firefox that said the website wanted to know my location!


----------



## Puntoboy (Jun 30, 2007)

What's wrong with that? People in this country are scared too easily. 

My iPhone asked me whether I want a certain application to know my location and depending on the app I either click yes or no. Simple as that.


----------



## [email protected] (Jan 9, 2006)

First time i ever got spooked was yonks ago when everyone was having sig boxes that showed ip address, isp and o/s all with a little caveman in, then i got my own and realised it was just a clever bit of coding


----------



## jamest (Apr 8, 2008)

According to the ip2location website I am currently in the Houses of Parliament. So not quite good enough yet, but there will be a time when it works flawlessly or it will become even more flawed when IPv6 comes out as the database of IP addresses will be even wider.


----------



## Blazebro (May 18, 2007)

I get this all the time, even logging into aol I get targeted adverts. There's a whole industry behind them. If you have Firefox one of the little extras you can get has a pop up window which shows the marketing companies which are monitoring you on line. 

One that creeps cropping up all the time is Google Analytics, but there about 6 or so that regularly crop up. There's not alot you can do, but for the companies they can charge a premium as they are directing the most apropriate advertising straight at you. 

For instance, when I was looking for a new laptop I looked at sveral different Dell systems, XPS/Alienware. When I looked at XPS, I would get adverts for XPS popping up, when I looked at Alienware I would get Alienware adverts popping up. Too close to be a coincidence.

The upshot of this is that Dell spend millions on advertising, which possibly leads to them selling alot of systems, but their systems are now whey overpriced.

The only thing I did was to ignore them. In fact it has the opposite effect with me, I go out of my way not to buy from them.


----------



## Blazebro (May 18, 2007)

jamest said:


> The Government have informed the UK that Internet pirates are pure evil, much worse than the Somalian pirates.


That's nothing to what the Daily Mail says about single mothers.


----------



## mba (Jun 17, 2006)

Those annoying popups think i am in Rotherham/Sheffield yet i live about 30 miles from each in Derbyshire.

Im on BT dynamic IP, if you iptrace my ip its second jump from my internal router is an Exchange in Sheffield.


----------



## Guest (Jan 27, 2010)

mba said:


> Those annoying popups think i am in Rotherham/Sheffield yet i live about 30 miles from each in Derbyshire.
> 
> Im on BT dynamic IP, if you iptrace my ip its second jump from my internal router is an Exchange in Sheffield.


That is because BT have a POP (point of presence) in Sheffield, most likely Plusnet. It is not an exchange, exchange information does not show up on a traceroute unless you are logged into the BT test domain.


----------



## Guest (Jan 27, 2010)

Puntoboy said:


> It's not always static IPs that give your location. Dynamically assigned ones do as well.


I think you misunderstand - it is nothing directly to do with the fact that the IP is dynamic or static but if you have entered your address information into a website, if it then sells your address data to a firm with an associated IP, if you have a dynamic address, next time reconnect and pick up an IP the data they have collected will no longer be relevant. If they are smart they will realise it is a dynamic IP and not bother associating the address with the IP. If you are on static the chances are increased because of at least 3 factors:

1) They will detect it is a static IP and record the information, 
2) The IP will not change which will make the data obsolete, 
3) If you have a static IP depending on your ISP/etc your address and contact information will be associated with that IP on the WHOIS database.

It is *not* possible if you are on a *shared* dynamic IP range for an official WHOIS lookup to return your details, the information could not be submitted and updated in time.


----------

