
Show HN: Tracing You, a website that tries to “see” where its visitors are - forgetcolor
http://tracingyou.bengrosser.com
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myztic
Sites like that (without flashy Street View pictures bound to be wrong
anyways) have been around for a very long time, many are provided by VPN
providers to let their customers check how good they are hidden. It simply
showed Amsterdam for me, which is my current VPN-Server, so no surprises
there. What I mostly use to check such things
[https://ipleak.net/](https://ipleak.net/)

What he does is only getting the location information and simply cross-
referencing it with Google Street View / Google Maps Data. That being said:
It's an art installation [http://bengrosser.com/projects/tracing-
you/](http://bengrosser.com/projects/tracing-you/) to provoke questions about
privacy in a more closely connected world than ever. Noble idea.

"First it looks up the IP address using ipinfo to obtain geolocation. This is
represented as a latitude/longitude pair (e.g. 48.8631831,2.3629368) that
identifies a precise location on the earth. The latitude/longitude is sent to
Google, where it queries the Street View, Static Maps, and Javascript Maps
data services."

Not too impressive though.

~~~
myztic
One more thought: I seriously hope the artist clarifies the shortcomings of
his approach when presenting it! It wouldn't be right to suggest to people
that the locations are highly accurate.

I can imagine a non-technical relative/friend of mine seeing such an
installation, then telling me that you can track down every internet user
accurately and even show the building he is living in and me having to explain
why that is not the case and a ridiculous notion.

No matter how noble the cause, deception is wrong. After all, I don't tell my
kids their heads may explode if they take illegal drugs...

~~~
snowden9998
Nobody is being deceptive. From the "about" link on the site:

"... Sometimes what this image shows is eerily accurate; other times it is
wildly dislocated. ... How accurate are the system’s data sources and when
might they improve?"

And more from the artist's page about the project:

"... How close it gets is very much dependent on how networks are built,
configured, operated, and distributed where you are, which network you use,
and the accuracy of the data associated with those networks."

~~~
myztic
Quite aware of that, but I was referring to something different: I hope the
same information is available to the people seeing (that is: experiencing
live) the art installation (or past tense because it already happened?!).

I don't know how it was/is/will be presented to those people.

I also want to clarify that I did not accuse anybody of any wrongdoing, just
said "I seriously hope ..." based on my experience with non-technical people
misinterpreting technical stuff (or non-scientific people misinterpreting
science,... and so forth).

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gruez
So how does this work? I'm guessing it uses some sort of geoip database, but
those are usually specific to an ISP, so you'll end up visitors from the same
local ISP show up on the same location. I'm guessing they add a random
(deterministic) bit of noise to each IP to mix things up a bit.

~~~
keithpeter
I got Amsterdam (presumably the RIPE routing) and a quick flash of Birmingham
UK but the city centre rather than the bit I live in a few miles out. Then
lots of US locations so presumably the images are changing as other users
access the page.

~~~
Outdoorsman
When the page loaded for me my IP and a street view 13 miles away from me
loaded in the upper left hand panel...

Read later that it updates with each visitor...

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Ezhik
It actually flashed my city, that's cool. Now I'm kinda interested to see all
the webcams that are the closest to me.

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hamhamed
These aren't webcams (as some of the comments mention that)

My best guess would be using a geoIP to detect the user's city and then using
Google Map's street view from that city and showcase it for a couple of
seconds. The webmaster would have more accurate data if he had asked for HTML5
geo location permission.

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mkj
This would be cool picture-in-picture at the bottom corner of a busy site.
Useful if it had an estimation of accuracy printed too (assume the API gives
that?)

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ck2
It make take several decades but one day google maps satellite view is going
to be live/realtime.

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wingerlang
So the images are the _other_ visitors? I guess then it did find me as it
showed my city that one time. Now it's only US/DE showing up.

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rocky1138
For me in Waterloo, Canada it showed a picture of Richmond Hill, which is
118km away. I'm fine with that :)

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8note
I'm on my phone data, and if puts me on the east coast instead of the west

