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Someone lives in city A, but their IP address from home always displays as belonging to city B, 50 miles away in the same country. Both cities are the largest in the country, so this is not about one being rural. This sort of mix-up is like saying one is from New York City when all evidence points to them being from Philadelphia. How is this possible?

What can be said about their internet service provider (ISP) and connection, e.g.

  • whether it is wifi or fiber, and
  • whether the IP address is shared amongst several other clients of the same ISP, allowing for each's individual anonymity (location privacy)?
user610620
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  • Geolocation is not that accurate. ISP can have a large pool of IP to cover a wide geographic area and GeoIP is only a lookup in a mostly static and sometimes wrong database, i.e no real-time association between location and IP. See also [If the IP address's GPS coordinates is far enough from me, could a hacker be on my line?](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/165227/if-the-ip-addresss-gps-coordinates-is-far-enough-from-me-could-a-hacker-be-on) – Steffen Ullrich Jan 02 '21 at 17:58
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    Ultimately, this is not a security question. – schroeder Jan 02 '21 at 18:14
  • @SteffenUllrich That linked question is closed. I would expect that a link for a duplicate would be a valid and open question with an accepted answer. Perhaps you link to the incorrect post by mistake? Thanks – Kind Contributor Jan 03 '21 at 06:30
  • How about this one instead - https://superuser.com/questions/1614592/when-i-do-a-geoip-lookup-why-does-the-nearby-capital-city-come-up-instead/1614593#1614593? – Kind Contributor Jan 03 '21 at 06:48
  • @Todd: While the linked question is closed it still has an answer which provides the necessary information. Not every question has accepted answers even if the answers seem to fit the question. And the question you've linked on superuser also matches this one, but cannot be linked as duplicate since it is not on this site. – Steffen Ullrich Jan 03 '21 at 07:57
  • @SteffenUllrich Kindly, unduplicate this question so I can link it to the superUser answer; or unclose the other question, so that new answers can be added. – Kind Contributor Jan 03 '21 at 11:11
  • @Todd: One cannot make the question a duplicate of one at another SO site. And as schroeder said - it is (at least as currently asked) actually not a security question, i.e. off-topic here. – Steffen Ullrich Jan 03 '21 at 12:51
  • @SteffenUllrich Perhaps my comment with the SuperUser link can be upvoted then? – Kind Contributor Jan 04 '21 at 00:15

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