http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20336-internet-probe-can-track-you-down-to-within-690-metres.html
"The new method zooms in through three stages to locate a target
computer. The first stage measures the time it takes to send a data
packet to the target and converts it into a distance – a common
geolocation technique that narrows the target's possible location to a
radius of around 200 kilometres.
(..)
Finally, they repeat the landmark search at this more fine-grained
level: comparing delay times once more, they establish which landmark
server is closest to the target. The result can never be entirely
accurate, but it's much better than trying to determine a location by
converting the initial delay into a distance or the next best IP-based
method. On average their method gets to within 690 metres of the target
and can be as close as 100 metres – good enough to identify the target
computer's location to within a few streets."
It seems to me to be a rather flaky way of finding out your estimated
location. But I guess it could be helpful when the objective is just to
create some global database of demographics for marketing and privacy
invasion purposes, where specifics of an individual's exact location
don't really matter.
Besides the latter can always be subpoenaed. ;-)
One more reason to use VPN and other such techniques to hide your location.
Greetings,
Jeroen
--
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
