On Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:13:17 +0000 Greg Skinner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Personally, I have trouble accepting some of the claims the > geotargeting companies have made, such as Quova's 99.9% to the country > level, and 95% to the US state level. ( More info at > http://www.quova.com/page.php?id=132 ) Perhaps I'm just part of the > outlying data; using the "three top search engines" I rarely see them > get the city correct (ie. where *I* am physically located, as opposed > to where the registration data says the block is located), and have > seen some glaring errors for the country in some cases. > > Geotargeting has turned into quite a business, and I'm concerned that > people who rely on these services do not fully understand the risks. > Some folks are relying on it for serious purposes. Many Internet gambling sites use it to avoid serving US customers, for example. Their risk is criminal liability for the executive -- the have a strong incentive to get reliable data... Some sports media sites use it to enforce local area blackouts; though that doesn't need to be perfect, if it's too imperfect they risk breach of contract and expensive lawsuits. For the advertisers, best effort is probably good enough... --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb