X-Originating-IP

[Leeroy]

If someone is telling me they are for example in Las Vegas but when i check the mail header the X-Originating-IP says they are in Florida where are they. The X-Originating-IP cant be wrong can it?

Cheers,
Lee

 

[dotNetFreak]

Are you just looking up the IP address at ARIN?

If so, that just shows the details of the NetBlock owner not necessarily the person who is actually using the IP address.

 

[Leeroy]

Are you just looking up the IP address at ARIN?

If so, that just shows the details of the NetBlock owner not necessarily the person who is actually using the IP address.

Looking on http://ip-address-lookup-v4.com/

 

[dotNetFreak]

Looking on http://ip-address-lookup-v4.com/

Which basically pulls the information from the relevant registry so if you enter an IP address that is assigned to RIPE it will pull the details from their DB and if it's one assigned to ARIN it will pull it from there etc.

The X-Originating-IP will show you the IP address of the connection that sent the message (providing it hasn't been spoofed), however the lookup will show you the location of who the IP address is owned by or registered to, so if I sent you a message and you looked up the IP address it would show Sheffield as that is where the ISP I'm currently using is based, although I'm nowhere near Sheffield

On the other hand I could be connected via a VPN or remote desktop to a machine on a network based in London that uses an IP range that is registered to an address in Scotland.

You can't always rely on a lookup of an IP address to tell you whereabouts the person using that IP address is based, only where the owner of the IP address has registered it to.

Sometimes however it is spot on, if I was at work and sent you an e-mail and you looked up the IP address it would reveal my location correctly as the IP address it would be sent from is registered to where I work.

 

[rob]

However if I sent an email at the moment it would be out by about 500 miles

In general the country is right, but rest is debateable. Google has some decent geolocate tools.

 

[jonno]

i'd love to find out how some of the adult sites like adultfriendfinder get their geolocation, whenever i've landed on one of their landing pages it's always been accurate to my local town, not city !

 

[stender]

Yes I accidently clicked on a site once and got a popup from a stunner in my local town wanting to meet me.

 

[Leeroy]

Thanks guys its a lot clearer now .

 

[Skinner]

When I used to use havenco for a 'special' host, if you did a look up that shows the location on a map, it used to pin point in the middle of the sea, which was always funny

On a side note, the US is a ball ache for that, if you look up the hostname you get something that looks like w93k.fl.30953-arin, that can usually pin point the state, if the IP doesn't. They usually use 2-4 letter abbreviations for the states.

 

[thecat]

There's several free services that will return a town name when you send an IP. Classic internet marketing trick - was used a lot in the "Google 3 day course" type scam.