Here, in the World Wide Web, your IP is your identity . It shows where you are from, which ISP you are using and a lot of other details.( Don’t worry it won’t show your name or address !! )
Whenever you say you are from India, on the web, someone can actually verify if you are really from India. This is useful when people do online transactions. Checking the IP address location, is one way to prevent online fraud.
I will tell you how we use it, at work. Lot of people try to purchase hosting accounts using stolen cards etc.
There are a few countries from where most of them operate. From Wikepedia,
“Whilst internet fraud is widespread, companies providing fraud detection services report higher than normal levels of fraudulent activity from countries such as Venezuela, Ukraine, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Israel. Countries with low reported levels of internet fraud include Austria, New Zealand, Taiwan, Norway, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, South Africa, Hong Kong, the UK, France, and Australia.”
We check the billing address of the card and the IP address location and will see an American signing up for hosting account from South Africa !!. If there are no other signs of fraud on that account ( like an email address which sounds fishy, or the amount they they are paying, or the domain name they used etc ), we send something to verify the account holder. It may be either through email or over the phone. ( Yea, there
are times when Americans go on tour to South Africa right ? )
The Lie Detection Test
Now, lets come back to India. Go to whatismyip.com and it will tell you what your IP is, and now, go here to find out your location and tell me what the result is.
I will tell you what happens when I do this test. My IP says, I am in Bangalore which is 533Km away from where actually I am. Liar !!
Is this really an issue ?
When you sign up for hosting or domain registration, or any other online transactions and payments, you may get marked as fraud and will have to go through a long process of verification. They will tell you, that you are a liar.
Just like newspapers have different editions to serve different Cities or states, websites also can provide you something relevant to your area, by identifying your IP location. Even though I am yet to see any websites doing this in India, ( please let me know if there is any website that already has this feature ) this feature may not work properly if someone wants to try it.
Now, you guys please check the ip and the ip location and tell me if it is showing correctly. Also, please note the name of your ISP too. ( I am using Airtel now. Oh yeea, Tata Indicom is also not bad, they said I am
in Hydrabad, when I was using their Plug 2 Surf.
12 responses so far ↓
1 s4n705h // Jul 3, 2008 at 1:23 am
the reason the site told that you are from bangalore is that is your ISP’s Server is situated at bangalore. so next time you see something like that it means that it dosent show your location but your ISP’s.
2 Philip // Jul 3, 2008 at 6:31 am
Yup, as the above person mentioned, they only track you upto the ISP. I do get a lot of spam and hate msgs in my blog and i have tried tracking them down. All i get upto is to their ISP.
3 Poonam // Jul 3, 2008 at 9:24 am
This is a very new thing for me. So if I track a IP address, it will show my ISP location!
4 dinu // Jul 3, 2008 at 10:01 am
@ s4n705h and Philip
Yep, I understand this is because their server is located there and IP is being tracked up to their location. I am concerned about this itself. !! Try signing up for something on godaddy or some other company, and you will see the difference.
@ Poonam
I am searching for more info on this, will let you all know
5 arvind // Jul 3, 2008 at 12:05 pm
i track lot of my regular readers
infact most of them…
just out of curiosity
i use geosites.com
6 dinu // Jul 3, 2008 at 12:17 pm
@ Arvind
and you always get Bangalore eh ?
7 Poonam // Jul 3, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I will check out geosites.com too!
@Dinu: Actually I got lot of info from your post.
8 dinu // Jul 3, 2008 at 2:06 pm
@ Poonam
Glad to know that
9 Joel // Jul 3, 2008 at 3:47 pm
That’s a great tool. I am familiar with that.
Grrr…Need to do something to get rid of all spams coming form Germany on my blog…!
10 dinu // Jul 3, 2008 at 3:56 pm
@ Joel
Use IP Deny Manager and block those IPs man .. and if you want to block an entire country, here is a website that may help
http://www.blockacountry.com/
11 Philip // Jul 4, 2008 at 6:33 am
We do register our domains with godaddy and have no problems. Maybe its to do with the fact that singapore is such a small place that whereever you go, your ISP is just 10 kms away from you…hehehe
12 dinu // Jul 4, 2008 at 10:43 am
@ Philip
coool !! that’s really funny man
think about us !!
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