How do they know where I live?

Ardent

Clever but annoying. Came across a couple of sites recently, e.g.:

http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?cat=video&file=1-1_Cisse.wmv

You can see ads on this page along the lines of meet girls in Dublin yadda yadda (fine looking women they are too). I cleared all my cookies and yet they still seem to know my location!

Anyone know how this is being done and how to avoid this targeted advertising?

Irishpimpdude

lol your ip....

Sean^DCT4

your IP address, what can be done you say.. proxy.. cant think of the name of the program(s) but there's loads out there to mask/hide your IP address..

I couldnt really care less but up to yourself I suppose..

Seán

Hagar

If it's any consolation to you when I view that page all the girls are from French towns near where I live.

i71jskz5xu42pb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software

Ardent

I didn't know your location could be identified by your IP address. Did a quick look into it and apparently they can not only identify the city or region you live but your longtitude and latitude?! E.g., http://www.ip2location.com. Mad.

I was worried that there might be some spyware on my PC.

Out of interest, is everyone in Ireland reading this getting identified as being in Dublin or, if say you're living in Galway, getting identified as being in Galway?

leeroybrown

An address from any Irish ip allocation will probably be flagged as Dublin (or possibly Belfast). Theoretically they could be more accurate for allocations to individual sites but they can't be for DSL/Cable ip's as they are shared out nationwide.

Fionn_McCool

leeroybrown wrote:

An address from any Irish ip allocation will probably be flagged as Dublin (or possibly Belfast). Theoretically they could be more accurate for allocations to individual sites but they can't be for DSL/Cable ip's as they are shared out nationwide.

Not 100% correct as i have a cable connection (cablesurf) and on sites such as this one it shows nice looking women fom Waterford, Ireland, although i am sure it may weel be correct for the likes of NTL etc

Zoned

Fionn_McCool wrote:

Not 100% correct as i have a cable connection (cablesurf) and on sites such as this one it shows nice looking women fom Waterford, Ireland, although i am sure it may weel be correct for the likes of NTL etc

A place like ip2location have a database like this one....
http://www.analysespider.com/ip2country/IP-COUNTRY-REGION-CITY.html

CyberGhost

You could just use this website

http://www.the-cloak.com/login.html

MrJoeSoap

Those ad's are hilarious, I'd never want to block them.

"Find girls in Inchicore now!" - accompanied by some babe in hot pants rollerblading across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sam Vimes

its great to know there's all these gorgeous women in dublin, ireland just waiting for me. i don't know why such hot girls have to use a dating service though

elmer

I find it amusing when they have placenames in irish that few people would use

Gurgle

I'm quite impressed actually, I'm getting ads for girls in Ireland but the ads are in German. We're routed through Germany, so how can they tell I'm in Ireland?

egan007

It supprises me that people wonder about this question.

Think of an ip as a phone number

if your phone was 01 8...... i would know you were in dublin

same principle

r3nu4l

egan007 wrote:

It supprises me that people wonder about this question.

Think of an ip as a phone number

if your phone was 01 8...... i would know you were in dublin

same principle

Horray, good advice in this thread, pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box and cutting to the quick of the problem (I've worked in the corporate environment for waaayy too long .

Yep, I think one of the best ways to avoid this (and other problems)is a proxy, one of the best out there at the moment is Proxomitron www.proxomitron.info I think this has a tutorial and is also reviewed on www.castlecops.com

Archytas

Hot girls?? All the ads I see are for women in limerick(live in Kildare)... and even the fake women are ugly! Hotpants....? I never get to see the cool stuff...