New Jersey cracking down on geo-location violators

[The Buzz]

In the first year of Internet gambling in New Jersey, investigators and computer technicians at the division’s Atlantic City control center have been busy stopping illegal gamblers from — electronically speaking — sneaking across the border.

Read more from the Press of Atlantic City: http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/n...481be0cf2.html

[universal4]

Funny, they made no mention of the proxy's that exist within the state, that would allow players from other states to completely circumvent any geolocation controls they have in place.

Rick
Universal4

[Sherlock]

It is possible to locate IP address otherwise than through RIPE registry?

How about Blackberry users and many others that must use VPN?

[universal4]

Yes Sherlock,

If you are talking about looking up ip's that you already know, obviously you can look them up through RIPE/ARIN/APNIC/LACNIC/AFRINIC/etc/etc If you are looking up US Ip's start at ARIN whois.

Now if you are looking for geo-location, yes there are dozens of sites that allow you to look up an ip and see where it is located, however, MOST of them query a database for answers so the accuracy will only be as good as the last time the database was updated.

I am in contact with ISP's all the time and they will at times write back things like "I am sorry sir, I didn't realize those ip's were even allocated to anyone, we will look into the abuse traffic coming from that subnet immediately".

Sherlock, my guess is that will a little bit of creative google searching, you should likely be able to come up with a database that would allow you to look up a specific geo-location and get a close to accurate list of most of the subnets in a specified location.

What struck me as slightly ironic from the article was how much they kept pushing the idea that gps was telling them where everyone was. That would easily be true if they were on a mobile device (with location services turned on) but if they were on any other type of pc/mac, the only way they would know is by ip, and if the database queried was not accurate, neither would their results be.

My laptop does NOT have a gps enabled, and I highly doubt the routers down the street do, but the IP address will tell ya where I am....within about 30 or 40 miles.

Rick
Universal4

[Sherlock]

I do use maxmind database for geo-location, it is about 99% accurate for countries. For states or cities it has MUCH lower accuracy. This is why I ask what is their method where they see all the desperate gamblers gambling right on the state border. IMO the article is just bullshit. Nobody has so accurate databases.

For example it is not unusual for 3g networks to show just one city for whole country. Right now my IP address shows me some s***hole in Amazonia thousands miles away while I am in Rio de Janeiro.

[universal4]

LOL,

So glad I was not the only one that saw how much BS about the gps they were dishing out in the article.

ARIN is supposed to be updated, but they are not always, and in fact, I quite often find ISP's that refuse to respond to ARIN requests for POC updates, so it would not surprise me that maxmind or some of the other databases could be just as accurate as any other lookup methods.

One thing that can NOT be forged, is a tracert. However, it would not return any better results than what you are probably doing now, since even using tracert you would end up with a bunch of ip's you would have to query in a database and make an educated guess.

In your case about the answer being 1000 miles away, my guess is the isp that is in Amazonia has resold/leased (re-allocated) a block of the subnet to the isp in your area.

I use a few lookup places that provide 3 or 4 locations in the response, if they are all the same state then I assume they are correct. If there is more than one, then often you can tell who is in control of the ip space and who is leasing it.

Doing the query at ARIN itself is usually more accurate, but also more time consuming.

Rick
Universal4

[Sherlock]

It is the same ISP in Amazonia and here in the South - vivo.com.br. Well yes, it is chaotic Brazil but even in Europe I can see foten that IP lookup shows me different state/region in a country than where I actually am. USA will have most accurate databases, but not that much that it can determine where the gamblers are.

Simply someone discovered geo-ip, saw many people at border and probably was asleep during geography lessons while at school.

North Jersey is the most heavily crowded region, suggesting that many New Yorkers have been crossing state lines for Web betting. The South Jersey suburbs near Philadelphia are another Internet gambling hotspot, an indication that Pennsylvania gamblers are seeking action across the Delaware River.

The quote is nice example of the logic of the idiots. North Jersey and South Jersey suburbs are the most covered areas of their super-rocket_science-geo-target-weapon (that any freelancer would implement in 20mins for 100 USD incl. licence fee) not because there are desperate gamblers from another states, but because there simply lives the majority of population, omg. It almost make me physical pain to read articles like this. (The out of context parts about hack protection do not help me a lot. After they will be targetted by hackers, they will never realize it.)