Blocking VPN backdoor for GEO IP blocking - geolocation

We are looking at a web project and wish to register users according to their GEO location.
i.e. We do not want users in the UK registering as users in the USA.
Using Geo IP we can identify the user's country however a simple VPN service can negate this.
Is it possible to have a VPN IP blacklist or similar that would only force users to connect from "legitimate" IP addresses?

Found this:
https://www.howtogeek.com/403771/why-do-some-websites-block-vpns/
It’s common for websites to locate and track users based on their IP
addresses. IP tracking is an easy way to increase account security,
build targeted advertisements, and show users different content
depending on the country in which they live. This practice of IP
tracking is one of the main reasons why people use VPN services, but
it’s also the reason why blocking VPN access to a website is so easy.

Related

Location on Rails App

I have a rails app and I want to track if a user of the app is accessing the app from a computer inside a specific venue or office.
I will like to know if my users are accessing from our venue or at their home (any other location). I have tried geocoder gem but its is not very accurate, the other option was using an ip, but my internet provider gives me dynamic ips.
What can I use to solve this problem?
One thing i have also tried is accessing my computers mac address but from what I have been reading, for security reasons there is no way to access this number.

How to store client names that've accessed wifi via captive portal?

I'd like to setup a captive portal for an open wifi network, where users can access the internet by only entering their first names.
The aim of which is to build a list of first names currently connected to the network. Ideally this setup would remember MAC addresses and be able to greet returning clients (on an external display) the next time they automatically access the wifi network. (Can clients access the internet without having to re-login through captive portal?)
Thanks
One solution is to create an SQl database and store in it the first name and the MAC address of the client.
When the client log again you juste have to make a simple SQL request to find the name associated to the MAC address

Mobile development with Rails using Wi-Fi network - Configuring url's

It's common when developing a web application to want to test it on mobile devices to ensure touch fallbacks and responsiveness.
As it happens, it's easy to do this over a Wi-Fi network. You just join the network on both your computer running the localhost and the mobile device you want to access it on and then enter the url on your mobile device:
http://<YOUR_COMPUTERS_IP>:3000
replacing <YOUR_COMPUTERS_IP> with your computer's ip address and 3000 with the port you are using.
This worked for basic routing.
The site i'm now working on however uses dynamic subdomains (users get their own subdomain) so is there any way to configure this to work with any subdomain?, so that you would be able to access
http://<SUBDOMAIN>.<YOUR_COMPUTERS_IP>:3000
on both your mobile and computer.
You can't put a subdomain onto an IP address directly, but there is a service called xip.io that was built to do just this.
http://<SUBDOMAIN>.<YOUR_COMPUTERS_IP>.xip.io:3000

How to detect user location for RIM / Blackberry using IP address on a website?

I run a website which customises content by the user's location at a country level, so that users from different countries see different content. To determine a user's location, we run the IP address presented by the client in the REMOTE_ADDR header against MaxMind.com's GeoIP database. For desktop traffic this generally returns us adequately accurate data.
However, for users browsing from mobile devices, things are different. For example, the same user has come through from a South African IP address on desktop, and a United Kingdom address on his Blackberry. We know that he is physically in South Africa. On investigation, his UK IP address belonged to Research In Motion Limited, which is obviously the UK-based Blackberry service. His web requests on his Blackberry handset must be routed through RIM in the UK.
We've looked through the request headers to see if the actual origin IP address was shown in a header other than REMOTE_ADDR but have not found anything.
Any suggestions?
Many thanks!
When using BIS or BES, traffic is routed through a proxy server, run by RIM in case of BIS, or the company hosting the BES server. You could try using HTML5 location features.

How to estimate the user location in a web application?

On most of posts of SO I read the following about getting ip, location of users:
for users on a corporate network, the location will often be wrong. My corporate network places me in France, or Atlanta even though I'm in the UK. Off corporate network, it is unnervingly accurate
As per my understandings we should not use IP address. Then how can we estimate the user's location in a web application?
Can't you use the JavaScript geolocation API?

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