According to this, there is no easy way to tell the exact location of an IP address. So, when I visit Google Maps on my laptop from my home wifi, how does Google show me the exact location of my house ? What additional information does Google use to track me down ?
Instead of IP address geolocation, your browser might have WIFI geolocation enabled. It will pass the router MAC address to Google to find your house location. Google has a lot of Android device with GPS enabled to verify the location.
Related
Is W3C Geolocation API more accurate the IP geolocation for non-mobile devices? I am using https://ipstack.com/ and I am seeing big discrepancies between actual location and location identified by the service for desktop users, but after reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3C_Geolocation_API
GPS (Global Positioning System) This happens for any device which has GPS capabilities. A smartphone with GPS capabilities and set
to high accuracy mode will be likely to obtain the location data from
this. GPS calculate location information from the satellite signal. It
has the highest accuracy; in most Android smartphones, the accuracy
can be up to 10 metres.
Mobile Network Location Mobile phone tracking is used if a cellphone or wireless modem is used without a GPS chip built in.
Wi-Fi Positioning System If Wi-Fi is used indoors, a Wi-Fi positioning system is the likeliest source. Some Wi-Fi spots have
location services capabilities.
IP Address Location Location is detected based on nearest Public IP Address on a device (which can be a computer, the router it is
connected to, or the ISP the router uses). The location depends on the
IP information available, but in many cases where the IP is hidden
behind Internet Service Provider NAT, the accuracy is only to the
level of a city, region or even country.
It doesn't seem the W3C Geolocation API is any better for desktop users. It seems to be more precise for mobile users, but not desktop users. Is this correct?
It doesn't seem the W3C Geolocation API is any better for desktop users. It seems to be more precise for mobile users, but not desktop users. Is this correct?
This is correct, the W3C geolocation API is a good bet when
The user is using a browser (the UX for informed consent is well thought through by the browser maker, e.g Apple's Safari or the Firefox teams)
The user is on mobile (GPS hardware, WiFi triangulation, Google or Apple's-proprietary services such as Google Play Location Services being available) with the underlying OS
Fine location matters for your application (e.g ride-hailing or food delivery to your current location)
If the above criteria are generally not applicable most of the time to your application, then IP geolocation API services such as Fastah are a good choice for the country, approximate city, and geo-coordinates information.
In general, W3C Geolocation API is more accurate than IP geolocation such as IP2Location because it uses multiple parameters to determine location.
If GPS is not available in non-mobile device, they can use the WIFI MAC address or cell tower ID to determine location.
Does google offer geo location ip services like freegeoip, maxmind etc which can offer me the users exact ( need almost accurate like how gooogle offers) location, Country - State - City, Timezone,
Brower used
Mobile or PC
Google offers it as service of HTML5 in web browsers. You will need to have users permission to retrieve their geolocation information. The web browser will prompt for permission.
If you need the best accuracy for mobile users you should use the navigator geolocation API (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation/getCurrentPosition) and enable high accuracy to get the exact GPS position.
A good practice if your app can benefit from a less accurate location instead of no location at all is to fall back to an external IP geolocation API when the user denies location access : https://db-ip.com/api/jsdoc.php#browsergeo
When you open a webpage on a phone/tablet, and use
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition()
Do we get the same results that when we use Google Play services location API?
And do we get the same results that when we use iOS native location API?
Thank you!
It is really depends to what level of information is available in both OS.
For example, if both GPS chip is working in both Android and iOS and locked to the right numbers of satellite, then you should get the same results.
However, when GPS is not available, each API uses their own way such as wifi, cell tower ID or IP address to estimate the location, then you will find some discrepancy.
Reference: http://www.geolocation.com
I would like to get the IP Address / hostname / device (ios, android, web) for a specific tweet via Twitter API or anything similar.
Is that possible ?
There's absolutely no way to get IP address or hostname. That would be a massive privacy violation.
You can make a very rough guess at device by looking at the source parameter of a Tweet.
If it says "source":"Twitter for iPhone" you'll know it is coming from an iPhone. Not every source says which device it is running on.
for some reasons I'm using putty as a socks proxy and in 99% of sites my real ip will be hidden from servers but there is an interesting issue in google websites , google can't detect my real IP but can detect my real location.
I'm wondering what kind of code google is using for detecting real location.
regards.
Google use the cookie to watch you regardless your IP