You might be looking at your Threemail worldview report, the Google Analytics Geo overview, or your website security logs and seeing various locations. Some clients have expressed concern when their analytics are pulling various worldwide locations and wondering why they can span such a range of locations.
So how do you know where I am?
Accessing people’s locations online can be interesting – there are a few privacy factors that play into this.
Fine location data – such as a specific address or GPS needs express permission from the browser you are using. This can be difficult to obtain and is rarely required. Accessing more broad location information is theoretically easier to do by relying on IP addresses.
For non-commercial internet connections, your IP address can change regularly. Your internet service provider dynamically allocates this address. This means that a certain IP address can be used across multiple locations.
Your internet may also be proxying through a server in a different location. This is when all traffic is routed through a particular server before it is made available to you. Apple and Gmail typically proxy any images that are used in emails.
Canberra is special
You likely see Sydney show up in confirmation emails or other notices when logging in to a website from Canberra. Unless you’re connecting from a fixed IP address (like on a corporate network), your ISP is likely connecting to the internet via Sydney.
Services like Google Analytics can combine customer data with the information shown in your Google Analytics reports making it more accurate.
Find out where your IP address says you are!
Give this exercise a try – you can check where your IP address says you are with this website – ipapi.co.
And if you want to know more about how to read your website analytics or use location to target customers, talk to us today.