Category: privacy

When You’re a Default Kansas IP Address

Is there such a thing as a ‘digital hell’ well although it sounds like some sort of melodramatic media headline, one couple in Kansas could arguably have been living there for several years.

Everything that is connected to the internet has an IP address, every computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone needs some sort of address in order to communicate on the world wide web. Tracking, mapping and filtering these addresses is big business and many companies have sprung up providing accurate information on the IP address attached to your device.

Obviously knowing the location is one major part of the puzzle and there are several services for looking up the physical location of an IP address. You can have a look here at where your IP address appears to be located – https://www.whatismyip.com/ – did it return your correct location?  Sometimes these can be very accurate, the information sourced from companies like MaxMind has been built up over many years through a variety of methods. The information is used for a variety of reasons, from targeting advertising to region locking and filtering used by companies like Netflix

Sometimes, however this information is not very accurate at all but sufficient if you just want a specific country or region. However, when a company like MaxMind have no relevant data on an IP address they will tend to resort to assigning a default location. For example, if they have no further information other than country is USA, Maxmind will return a default location – the geographic center of the United States.

Sounds logical? It is until you realise that located in the geographical center of the US is a small farm in Kansas owned by James and Theresa Arnold. Furthermore, there are quite a few IP addresses which are registered to this ‘default location’ – specifically just over 600 million addresses.

Now it might seem that this isn’t really a problem, but unfortunately this is not the case. These 600 million addresses are real and being used online all the time – and of course with such a huge volume some of these addresses are being used for all sorts of activities. Spammers, hackers, cybercrime, terrorists, paedophiles are all using these IP addresses online and when anyone tries to investigate their location – they are directed to this small rural farm in Kansas.

For years the couple have been subject to all sorts of accusations – they’ve had visits from law enforcement agencies, public officials, ordinary people who’ve been crime victims and have tracked the IP address back to the Arnold’s home address. You can imagine the volume when even a small percentage of 600 million addresses are used for criminal purposes.

It’s not the only situation like this, there is a house located at the end of a cul-de-sac in Ashburn, Virginia which has similar problems. The town itself is the home to several huge data centers and server farms, all with registered commercial IP addresses – the house was unfortunately given as the default location for millions more IP addresses with similar results – strange accusations and police raids being a common occurrence.

Fortunately, there should be a happy ending for both these parties as the ‘default locations’ for unknown IP addresses is being changed to non-residential addresses such as the middle of a lake! The Arnold’s though are unsurprisingly also seeking some financial compensation for the distress and inconvenience over the year, and you can hardly blame them!