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There's so many ways to fake your location data. There's one way that you can't really fake: Send them a secret code on a piece of paper in the US mail to the

There's so many ways to fake your location data. There's one way that you can't really fake: Send them a secret code on a piece of paper in the US mail to their physical address. NextDoor used to do this at one point.

baubino 9mo ago
I worked on a location-based app a few years ago and this was the exact validation method we used (after having learned about it from using NextDoor). It’s incredibly slow and tedious though. We abandoned the app for other reasons but I always wondered how one could continued to manage this approach once network effects kick in and the app really starts to grow.
- patcon 9mo ago
  I think it's a neat service layer: and infra layer that attests to people's addresses -- to break it you need to intercept mail, which is a federal offence in most states. So it piggybacks on assurances of states, even while being nonstate. In an experimental identity system I prototyped as a civic tech project[1], I paired this with scraping a government "voter registration check" form and comparing against, and it was a two-fold guarantee: someone had to either submit false info to the voter registry or intercept mail. In theory it was very cheap to get very high assurances, for only the cost of a postcard API per user [1]: https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#about-this-fork https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#ab...
lubujackson 9mo ago
Obviously not unhackable and often outdated as people move around, but I always thought phone number area codes were a quick and dirty way to establish or roughly segment people by location.
- chrisweekly 9mo ago
  Most people I know have kept whatever mobile phone number they happened to have when number portability was introduced in late 2003.
seany 9mo ago
How does this work if you don't get mail service at your physical address? (PO box service only)
- Marsymars 9mo ago
  I don't know how Nextdoor does it, but if you're an entity where establishing physical location is important you can courier letters to pretty much anywhere. (At some multiples higher cost than regular mail service.)
itake 9mo ago
At the start, getting users is the first problem. No one is going to bother scamming your app if there is no one there. Then once people exploit the app, that doesn't mean they wont add value (e.g. contribute positive content). Maybe they are just a high school kid that wants to talk to his friends in his last town? Once you have users, then there will be other easy signals to detect: Is the person teleporting? Do they hit rate limits freq? Is their GPS location the exact 'center' of the city? Is there GPS a nice pretty number? Does their GPS location never move?
Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago
That seems a little excessive for an app like this. The only way I know of that users can fake their location is with a rooted device. I check for rooted devices in the app though so locations can't be spoofed.
- drnick1 9mo ago
  So presumably this will be an evil app that reinforces Google monopoly by using Play Integrity?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Marsymars 9mo ago
    What else would you suggest for an app with this concept?
    - g-b-r 9mo ago
      If that would really be the only option, don't make the app. If it gets very popular, those who don't want to be tied to Google will be excluded from something important. And the maker of this app thinks it could have a tremendous impact, so...
    - drnick1 9mo ago
      Maybe just trust the users, and rely on human moderation to deal with abuse. It's basically how any community works.
      - Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago
        I thought this comment thread was about location spoofing, but if we're talking about abuse on the platform, I do have a "report" button for each chat message. After 2 - 3 reports, the message gets deleted.
        9mo ago
drnick1 9mo ago
> Send them a secret code on a piece of paper in the US mail to their physical address. Many people will refuse, on principle, to provide this information to any company, unless perhaps it's for home delivery of some good.
adrianwaj 9mo ago
It's hard to fake a reputation score. If someone is providing services in an area, they aren't going to start faking a location, and if they do they won't gain any reputation. But location is already baked into many social media apps anyway, though. https://gemini.google.com/share/68d4fd324d94 https://gemini.google.com/share/68d4fd324d94 ...that'd be the real issue here, perhaps. Locally produced food is the important one, going forward. It can be much cheaper living away from a city, yet people still want their services. They want to know where the best place to live is.. even to the nearest mile for walking reasons. They want to know where a doctor is, if the nearest hospital is over an hour's drive away. Also language.. how can digital nomads move about and find same-language speakers. What's wrong with Google maps for this type of stuff? Is there a competitor with downloadable data? What if a war breaks out in your region or the internet goes out or is inaccessible. Need offline data. What happens if service providers don't trust users enough to want to share their data? A good idea would be for people to take photos of their local community board and share that, so long as the next Pol Pot doesn't see it as well. Another interesting use-case will be listings of locally tokenized assets. If I need access to a vacuum cleaner or power tools, who would have those nearby? Who has farm land for my heirloom seeds? Where can I buy dairy from pure, healthy livestock? Tokenized assets I expect to eventually grow in size as inequality becomes more K-shaped. People will start selling off these things to the ones with the gold or at least be more willing to rent their stuff out. People are being increasingly homogenized physically, mentally and financially. Location is one of the last areas of differentiation ... and targeting.
- Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago
  This is a completely different idea though.
ranger_danger 9mo ago
Disagree, it's very easy to temporarily forward USPS mail for a specific name from one address to another, and the sender has no idea.

baubino 9mo ago

I worked on a location-based app a few years ago and this was the exact validation method we used (after having learned about it from using NextDoor). It’s incredibly slow and tedious though. We abandoned the app for other reasons but I always wondered how one could continued to manage this approach once network effects kick in and the app really starts to grow.

patcon 9mo ago
I think it's a neat service layer: and infra layer that attests to people's addresses -- to break it you need to intercept mail, which is a federal offence in most states. So it piggybacks on assurances of states, even while being nonstate. In an experimental identity system I prototyped as a civic tech project[1], I paired this with scraping a government "voter registration check" form and comparing against, and it was a two-fold guarantee: someone had to either submit false info to the voter registry or intercept mail. In theory it was very cheap to get very high assurances, for only the cost of a postcard API per user [1]: https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#about-this-fork https://github.com/patcon/id.c4nada.ca?tab=readme-ov-file#ab...

lubujackson 9mo ago

Obviously not unhackable and often outdated as people move around, but I always thought phone number area codes were a quick and dirty way to establish or roughly segment people by location.

chrisweekly 9mo ago
Most people I know have kept whatever mobile phone number they happened to have when number portability was introduced in late 2003.

seany 9mo ago

How does this work if you don't get mail service at your physical address? (PO box service only)

Marsymars 9mo ago
I don't know how Nextdoor does it, but if you're an entity where establishing physical location is important you can courier letters to pretty much anywhere. (At some multiples higher cost than regular mail service.)

itake 9mo ago

At the start, getting users is the first problem. No one is going to bother scamming your app if there is no one there. Then once people exploit the app, that doesn't mean they wont add value (e.g. contribute positive content). Maybe they are just a high school kid that wants to talk to his friends in his last town? Once you have users, then there will be other easy signals to detect: Is the person teleporting? Do they hit rate limits freq? Is their GPS location the exact 'center' of the city? Is there GPS a nice pretty number? Does their GPS location never move?

Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago

That seems a little excessive for an app like this. The only way I know of that users can fake their location is with a rooted device. I check for rooted devices in the app though so locations can't be spoofed.

drnick1 9mo ago
So presumably this will be an evil app that reinforces Google monopoly by using Play Integrity?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- Marsymars 9mo ago
  What else would you suggest for an app with this concept?
  - g-b-r 9mo ago
    If that would really be the only option, don't make the app. If it gets very popular, those who don't want to be tied to Google will be excluded from something important. And the maker of this app thinks it could have a tremendous impact, so...
  - drnick1 9mo ago
    Maybe just trust the users, and rely on human moderation to deal with abuse. It's basically how any community works.
    - Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago
      I thought this comment thread was about location spoofing, but if we're talking about abuse on the platform, I do have a "report" button for each chat message. After 2 - 3 reports, the message gets deleted.
      - 9mo ago

drnick1 9mo ago

> Send them a secret code on a piece of paper in the US mail to their physical address. Many people will refuse, on principle, to provide this information to any company, unless perhaps it's for home delivery of some good.

adrianwaj 9mo ago

It's hard to fake a reputation score. If someone is providing services in an area, they aren't going to start faking a location, and if they do they won't gain any reputation. But location is already baked into many social media apps anyway, though. https://gemini.google.com/share/68d4fd324d94 https://gemini.google.com/share/68d4fd324d94 ...that'd be the real issue here, perhaps. Locally produced food is the important one, going forward. It can be much cheaper living away from a city, yet people still want their services. They want to know where the best place to live is.. even to the nearest mile for walking reasons. They want to know where a doctor is, if the nearest hospital is over an hour's drive away. Also language.. how can digital nomads move about and find same-language speakers. What's wrong with Google maps for this type of stuff? Is there a competitor with downloadable data? What if a war breaks out in your region or the internet goes out or is inaccessible. Need offline data. What happens if service providers don't trust users enough to want to share their data? A good idea would be for people to take photos of their local community board and share that, so long as the next Pol Pot doesn't see it as well. Another interesting use-case will be listings of locally tokenized assets. If I need access to a vacuum cleaner or power tools, who would have those nearby? Who has farm land for my heirloom seeds? Where can I buy dairy from pure, healthy livestock? Tokenized assets I expect to eventually grow in size as inequality becomes more K-shaped. People will start selling off these things to the ones with the gold or at least be more willing to rent their stuff out. People are being increasingly homogenized physically, mentally and financially. Location is one of the last areas of differentiation ... and targeting.

Adrian-ChatLocl 9mo ago
This is a completely different idea though.

ranger_danger 9mo ago

Disagree, it's very easy to temporarily forward USPS mail for a specific name from one address to another, and the sender has no idea.