How do they know my city?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cooter
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Cooter

A couple of times lately two different web sites have displayed ads saying
such-and-such was available in the town I live in. With both a hardware and
a software firewall on my system, how can a remote site determine my
location? And if they can find that out, what else are they finding out?
 
Cooter said:
A couple of times lately two different web sites have displayed ads
saying such-and-such was available in the town I live in. With both a
hardware and a software firewall on my system, how can a remote site
determine my location? And if they can find that out, what else are
they finding out?
Click to expand...

Most likely from your IP address.

And despite all the fear mongering rubbish you may have read on the
internet, it isn't really possible to 'hide' your IP address, nor should you
attempt to do so, if you like actually being connected to the internet.
 
When you get a webpage, their server has to send it to your
IP address. They then cross reference the IP address to
locations. Your browsing open the firewall.

You may also have spyware which can open the firewall.


|A couple of times lately two different web sites have
displayed ads saying
| such-and-such was available in the town I live in. With
both a hardware and
| a software firewall on my system, how can a remote site
determine my
| location? And if they can find that out, what else are
they finding out?
|
|
 
Cooter said:
A couple of times lately two different web sites have displayed ads
saying such-and-such was available in the town I live in. With both a
hardware and a software firewall on my system, how can a remote site
determine my location? And if they can find that out, what else are
they finding out?
Click to expand...

They're looking at your IP address, but they don't really "know" your city,
they're making an educated guess. For instance, if you try to locate me by
my IP address, you're going ot get a city 120 miles south of here. I'm in a
rural area so around here, it means nothing. If you're in a city, it's more
likely to be accurate though, especially if you ahve a "small" ISP instead
of one of the major ones.

Your IP address has to be disclosed in order to use the web properly, but
not much other information should b going out about you. To find out what
your system is revealing about you, you can go to www.grc.com ; they have
testers that will show you what others can see about you while you're on the
internet. They don't do anything else; just try to read and see what they
can find out about you that others can also see. I use them periodically my
The best rating is stealth, but I'm suspecting from your question that
there might be some security holes you want to plug. That site will do a
pretty good job of explaining them all.

HTH
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