Oh, sweet merciful Jesus. Meet a family farm in Kansas with the weirdest serious problem you’ll likely see today:
For the last decade, Taylor and her renters have been visited by all kinds of mysterious trouble. They’ve been accused of being identity thieves, spammers, scammers and fraudsters. They’ve gotten visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children. They’ve found people scrounging around in their barn. The renters have been doxxed, their names and addresses posted on the internet by vigilantes. Once, someone left a broken toilet in the driveway as a strange, indefinite threat.
The very short version is that there’s a company that tracks the geographical location of IP addresses, and when the company doesn’t know where an American IP address is, they set it for the geographical center of the country. With a reasonably clean longitude and latitude. And guess what? That’s in Ms. Taylor’s front yard.
Read the whole thing. I can’t do the article justice. It’s kind of horrifyingly fascinating.
This quote…”the 600 million IP addresses attached to the home”…was shocking/amazing. What could go wrong?!?
Seems these databases need to be able to return a “N/A” value instead of a default. The one company changing their default to locations inside bodies of water is better, but you just know people will still be hopping in boats looking in the middle of lakes.
“Row harder! I just *know* Doctor Evil’s lair is down there *someplace*!!!”
I agree…it is amazing that they have not yet engaged legal counsel.
That may be on the agenda for this week.
My jaw dropped.
Either set the default for Challenger Deep or 760 United Nations Plaza, Manhattan, New York City