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IP Targeting – Match IP Addresses to Physical Mailing Addresses
- troydavis 9y agoRecent HN threads debated whether IP addresses were personally-identifiable information (PII), including these 2 threads today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16956449#16958544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16956449#16958544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954306#16956503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954306#16956503 Vendors like this one provide services that (try to) convert IP addresses to exact postal addresses. If you're thinking "How's that possible?", the answer is cross-site data sharing from contests and other user-submitted data. A user may enter a contest on site A, then data appending provider B may buy the user's form submission, including postal address and form submission source IP. Obviously it's far from 100% coverage or accuracy, but it's enough to target typical home broadband users with direct mail campaigns.