Internet mapping glitch plagues Kansas farm residents

The Vogelman family has owned a 360-acre plot of land near Wichita, KS, for over a century. Over the last few years, however, residents of the quiet and remote location have faced a technological nightmare.

In an article published last month in Fusion (and reprinted in part today in The Week), Kashmir Hill writes that the people inhabiting the location have “…been accused of being identity thieves, spammers, scammers, and fraudsters. They’ve gotten visited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children. They’ve found people scrounging around in their barn.”

The problem, Hill explains, is that the land is near the geographic center of the contiguous United States. Back in 2002, a company called MaxMind began providing “IP intelligence” to companies wanting to know the geographic location of a computer. If MaxMind knows only that a computer in in the U.S., “…it will point to the center of the country.” Or more precisely, because of the rounding of latitude and longitude (to 38, -97), it will point to the Vogelman property’s front yard.

Hill reports of several other people who have had similar though less severe problems, including a resident of Ashburn, VA, who had the misfortune of living near several large data centers. His house was searched by police looking for a stolen government laptop.

Hill contacted Thomas Mather, cofounder of MaxMind. He told her the company never claimed its database could be used to locate a household. But as Hill notes, “…people do use it that way.” When a website tells them the home address of a supposed scammer or cellphone thief, “…they get in the car and go.”

Mather told Hill that MaxMind would pick default locations that are in the middle of bodies of water rather than people’s homes. That could be a problem for anyone living on a houseboat.