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.
Aren't they already confused enough when any time I use my EVDO or 3G
Tether that someone believes I've been magically transported to New
Jersey or wherever the handoff is?
Understand the logic behind it, but you probably statistically have
just as much chance of being correct as you do incorrect.
Just like the old days with AOL & their proxies. There are not as many 3G or proxy / VPN users are there are standard users. Therefore, it works - mostly. (Or can work, I have no idea if the particular company / tool under discussion is actually useful.)
Data is data. It can be misinterpreted, but it is still data.
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.
The idea is to have finer and finer grained locations based on RTTs and a dense mesh of "landmark routers."
Of course, if you were using a tunnel or proxy that took N msec of delay, the best they could say is that you were N msec from the tunnel endpoint.
It would also be easy to institute something like the old GPS selective availability, with a software tunnel randomly adding a variable
delay (say, varying by up to 50 msec every 100 seconds).
It would also be easy to institute something like the old GPS selective availability, with a software tunnel randomly adding a variable
delay (say, varying by up to 50 msec every 100 seconds).
Regards
Marshall
Heck...with the amount of buffer bloat in place, I just keep a few
torrents running
on my T1, and the buffer bloat ensures there's always a nice 100-200msec of
extra variability on the RTTs, no extra tunnels needed.
