Re: What a pile of c**p!
"It not a huge job to associate an IP address with a property address ..."
MaxMind, who provide the IP/geographic address database, has always stated that this doesn't work, that their database is not fine-grained enough to locate IP addresses down to below city-block level (that is. at best to within about 500 yards) — in most cases, to city level and in some cases county or country level.
I have done location traces on my own IP addresses from time to time; when I was on Three, I was shown to be in Maidenhead Berks (about 30 miles out), although I don't know what the uncertainty radius was, and more recently I'm reckoned to be in the centre of London (probably Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly Circus), with an uncertainty radius of the entire Greater London County out to the M25.
The erroneous belief that "it is easy to associate an IP address with a household" has led to the creation of websites claiming that all the cybercriminals in the USA operate from one small farm north of Wichita, Kansas — because that farm's co-ordinates were the ones returned for IP addresses whose only known location is "somewhere in the USA", and those searching for it ignored (or weren't delivered) the 1500-mile uncertainty radius. Even the FBI made that mistake. Hopefully, now that the secret supervillain den has moved to the middle of a lake west of Wichita, the innocent inhabitants of the farm will be left in peace.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
