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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island For some reason I remembered this point being somebody's house that got a l

• EE84M3i 6y ago
  You're probably thinking about https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/10/lawsuit-how-a-quiet-kansas-home-wound-up-with-600-million-ip-addresses-and-a-world-of-trouble/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/1... which is about the maxmind geoip database using a specific coordinate for when they don't know anything more accurate than "United States"
  • chipsa 6y ago
    This is why you need both a location and a certainty when giving back geotagged info, and when you get it, you don't display a point, you display an appropriately sized circle. So you get something that actually resolves to "US", you draw a circle centered on the US, covering most of the US, instead of a point marker in the middle of the US.
• thristian 6y ago
  Often, when a database entry is geotagged with a country, province, or city, trying to plot that entry on a map will result in a marker being drawn at the exact geometric centre of the region, implying more precision than actually exists. When the database entry represents something important to people, like stolen property or a missing person, and something happens to be at the place the map marker lands, desperate people can do desperate things.