[Dxspider-support] Risks of spotter geolocation

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.87.html#subj7

"There's a fairly simple point here, and yet it's one that I regularly
observe people missing again and again.  IP addresses, postcodes, and
the like, were not invented to directly encode geographical locations.
 That is, simply, not their purpose.  IP addresses are used for
routing network traffic around Internet, and postcodes are used by
postal services to route mail through a postal system.  They are
designed for *those* purposes.  The "locations" that they do encode
are locations in the topographies of Internet network connections and
of postal system sorting and delivery systems, which are often *very*
different to actual geography.  Any correspondence that they might
have to actual geographical locations should be considered fortunate,
and unreliable.  Don't expect postcodes to always work in navigation
systems.  Don't expect your computer's IP address(es) to identify what
country, or even what continent, you are in.  They weren't designed
for that purpose, aren't maintained and updated for that purpose, and
often produce highly erroneous results when (mis-)used for that
purpose."

-- 
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us