Only recently Windows added the curl command so that we can use the command
line to quickly report our current ip address (curl icanhazip.com) but what
about a geolocate command line command to pinpoint its geographical origin?

The well known web standins are whatismyipaddress.com (or equivalent) and
geo-lookup.ifiy.org (or equivalent) but a browser has much more identifying
baggage than a simple curl/whatever command would be while using a vpn.

What's a freely available Windows command-line geolocate batch tool?
--
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Bugsy wrote:
> we can use the command line to quickly report our current ip address
> (curl icanhazip.com) but what about a geolocate command line command
> to pinpoint its geographical origin?

Personally...

.... my IP address using 'various' geolocate systems is NOT anywhere near
an /accurate/ locator of my *actual* location.

My postal zip code comes a lot closer for me. Of course, one could get
a precise smart bomb result w/ the actual fine lat/long numbers.

For me, the websites which try to locate me for an appropriate store in
my area are useless and I don't give it. If I want a nearby store, I
have to feed it my zip.

I also use my/a zip for a weather report. Usually my most accurate
weather is the zip just to my west, because that is where my immediate
'environment' comes from.

In my area, there are *HUGE* differences in the weather just a few miles
this way or that.

--
Mike Easter

On 04/11/2022 16:42, Mike Easter wrote:
> Bugsy wrote:
>> we can use the command line to quickly report our current ip address
>> (curl icanhazip.com) but what about a geolocate command line command
>> to pinpoint its geographical origin?
>
> Personally...
>
> ... my IP address using 'various' geolocate systems is NOT anywhere near
> an /accurate/ locator of my *actual* location.
>
> My postal zip code comes a lot closer for me.  Of course, one could get
> a precise smart bomb result w/ the actual fine lat/long numbers.
>
> For me, the websites which try to locate me for an appropriate store in
> my area are useless and I don't give it.  If I want a nearby store, I
> have to feed it my zip.
>
> I also use my/a zip for a weather report.  Usually my most accurate
> weather is the zip just to my west, because that is where my immediate
> 'environment' comes from.
>
> In my area, there are *HUGE* differences in the weather just a few miles
> this way or that.

Which three words describe where YOU are, Mike?

https://what3words.com/products/what3words-app

On 2022/11/04 10:42 am, Mike Easter wrote:

> ... my IP address using 'various' geolocate systems is NOT anywhere near
> an /accurate/ locator of my *actual* location.

It's not your location, nor his location that the original poster seeks.
He seeks the approximate location of a service which he's connecting to.

He's not the only one who wants a geolocation command line tool suite.
Based on my keyword search results, his problem is going to be which one.

https://github.com/akrentsel/geolocate
https://iharder.sourceforge.net/current/macosx/locateme/
https://github.com/junaidrahim/locate-route
https://github.com/maldevel/IPGeoLocation
https://github.com/onury/geolocator
https://github.com/EricZimmerman/iisGeolocate
https://github.com/loadzero/geoloc
https://nst.sourceforge.net/nst/docs/scripts/nstidsgeolocate.html
https://nst.sourceforge.net/nst/docs/scripts/nstgeolocate.html
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On Fri, 4 Nov 2022 09:42:45 -0700, Mike Easter wrote:
>
> In my area, there are *HUGE* differences in the weather just a few miles
> this way or that.
>

Same here. I've had good results with NOAA, the National Weather
Service. Unlike the weather channel; and most broadcasts, it doesn't
consistently overestimate the amount of precipitation to expect. But
its best feature is that it's customizable to a very small area --
you can pinpoint your own house or whatever else you can recognize
from satellite view.

https://www.weather.gov/

Enter your ZIP code or city and state and click Go. (Just pressing
Enter doesn't always work.) Then look at the forecast area map,
enlarge and move it till you've got the forecast area centered on
your house. Bookmark the URL, which contains fine-grained latitude
and longitude.

If you scroll down a bit below the map, you can click on the hourly
forecast graph. This tells you a whole host of predicted
measurements, hour by hour, for a 48-hour span. The graph lets you
customize which measurements you want to see.

--
Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/
Shikata ga nai...

John Robertson wrote:
> It's not your location, nor his location that the original poster seeks.

The OP didn't make clear what his actual intentions are.

The only purpose of his 'premise' icanhazip is one's own IP.

He also said this:

> The well known web standins are whatismyipaddress.com (or equivalent) and
> geo-lookup.ifiy.org (or equivalent) but a browser has much more identifying
> baggage than a simple curl/whatever command would be while using a vpn.

.... which doesn't clarify to me what his actual intentions are.

I think the OP should state what his intentions are before people start
finding him a tool to perform some ambiguous task.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

> John Robertson wrote:
>> It's not your location, nor his location that the original poster seeks.
>
> The OP didn't make clear what his actual intentions are.
>
> The only purpose of his 'premise' icanhazip is one's own IP.
>
> He also said this:
>
>> The well known web standins are whatismyipaddress.com (or equivalent) and
>> geo-lookup.ifiy.org (or equivalent) but a browser has much more identifying
>> baggage than a simple curl/whatever command would be while using a vpn.
>
> ... which doesn't clarify to me what his actual intentions are.
>
> I think the OP should state what his intentions are before people start
> finding him a tool to perform some ambiguous task.

Fair enough.
I'll describe the problem set in more detail so that you can help better.

To your original concern, it doesn't matter where the vpn actually is.
What matters is only where a typical geolocate command reports it to be.

It's not me I'm asking about (I know where I am).
It's not even where the vpn server happens to be (as I wouldn't care).

What matters is what any given company THINKS the vpn server is located.

Allow me to explain with a simple set of common every day examples.

Sometimes I use a set of vpn services that are outside the united states
Sometimes they're inside the united states
Sometimes they're in a certain county
Or city

The vpn server's rough location sometimes matters, where the first step is
the c:\windows\system32\curl.exe to find the vpn services' current ip addy

But the ip address isn't all you need sometimes
Sometimes you need the location of the service

For example
When watching netflix movies, the country itself is what sometimes matters
When watching current big time sports events, the state sometimes matters
When setting up & using a google account, the locality sometimes matters

When you have only one login to a program, you can't afford to be testing
out each vpn location without knowing how the vpn geolocates to others.

What I'm asking seems to be pretty much what robertson understood it to be
With so many geolocation batch commands to choose from, which do you use?
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Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote:

>> In my area, there are *HUGE* differences in the weather just a few miles
>> this way or that.
>>
>
> Same here. I've had good results with NOAA,

That's a perfect example for the problem I'm trying to find a solution.

Using that example, let's say you had one shot to find a suitable place in
the world where it was over fifty degrees with winds coming out of the
north and if you lost that shot, you could no longer use the company
service.

If that were the case, you can't use your own location because you already
know that it's raining outside at your location - so you need to spoof it.

But what spoof do you use?

If you didn't think about the problem ahead of time, you'd just spoof ANY
location on earth, say Paris, and cross your fingers that it would work.

Picking an arbitrary company, let's say this is ESPN (but the company does
NOT matter because the question related to ALL companies that geolocate).

It could be craiglist posting (if that still exists), or a login to a
specific small town local site, or even to a local community web server.

What matters is where that company thinks your IP address is located.

To be absolutely clear about what matters, it doesn't matter where you are
(unless your weather is the weather the web site is expecting it to be).

And, to be more clear, it doesn't even matter where the ip address is
physically located (the weather report for Paris could be off by a lot).

What matters is only what any given company THINKS the weather is at
whatever IP address your current vpn service is telling that company.

And you only get one shot.
It has to be right.

The weather in Paris doesn't matter.
What matters is what the company THINKS the weather is in paris.

The safest and best way to find a place where the weather is over fifty
degrees with winds coming out of the north is to run a geosearch.

You search first and FIND a place where the weather is what the company you
want to log into expects that weather to be.

Say you find out that in London right now, the weather is perfect for what
the company expects it to be (based on your gelocationweather command).

By running that search, you didn't need to log into the company site
which means you didn't ruin your chances of logging in successfully.

Here's the result of the efficient process
You run the command line tool to find a place reporting the right weather
You set your vpn to be from that place with the right weather
THEN you log into the company web site

The company does the same geolookup that you did
So the company gets the same weather that you did

Perfect.
Now you can log into the company web site
Because its lookup came out to be the same as your lookup did

That's all I'm seeking here which is a batch command that can find a
location with the weather that I want and then I set my vpn to that place.

Obviously substitute location for weather in the example above
and that explains what I want to do which is commonly needed.
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On 2022-11-04 20:00, Bugsy wrote:
> What I'm asking seems to be pretty much what robertson understood it to be
> With so many geolocation batch commands to choose from, which do you use?

Notice that such a command needs a large database to look up the IP and
find the location. And the database has to be updated frequently (and
the database cost money). This means that it is better to use a
webservice and query it. What can be done is automate a text search on
the results on some webpage and then print out only the gold.

There maybe such a command line program out there that does this, but I
can not say which, I do not know.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Bugsy wrote:
> it doesn't matter where the vpn actually is.
> What matters is only where a typical geolocate command reports it to be.

Are you trying to use a variety of free vpn/s; or are you using a vpn
service (often pay) which provides an 'array' of vpns to use, your choice?

As an example; proton vpn free provides 100 servers in 3 countries, .us
..jp .nl whereas proton pay provides 1700 servers in over 60 countries.

And, one can choose which country one wants free or pay.

The parameters of other free/pay vpn/s have other varieties of choices.

I actually don't think your 'problem' is very difficult in one sense;
but on the other hand, some 'wiley' services which care where the
participant is located are also able to detect the very condition of
your using a vpn, particularly the free ones.

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

>> it doesn't matter where the vpn actually is.
>> What matters is only where a typical geolocate command reports it to be.
>
> Are you trying to use a variety of free vpn/s; or are you using a vpn
> service (often pay) which provides an 'array' of vpns to use, your choice?

The vpn services I use are all free and are a variety around the world.
Even so, the question is more general than finding vpn in a certain city.
>
> As an example; proton vpn free provides 100 servers in 3 countries, .us
> .jp .nl whereas proton pay provides 1700 servers in over 60 countries.
>
> And, one can choose which country one wants free or pay.

The country is very often not enough granularity (see previous examples).
What matters is only what location the company thinks your location is.

>
> The parameters of other free/pay vpn/s have other varieties of choices.

If you want to watch some sports, even a state isn't enough granularity.
The sports provider is likely using a similar geolocate to what you want.

>
> I actually don't think your 'problem' is very difficult in one sense;
> but on the other hand, some 'wiley' services which care where the
> participant is located are also able to detect the very condition of
> your using a vpn, particularly the free ones.

That's not true in the situations that I've been testing out for years.
I can easily do what I want to do using the web services I already listed.

What I'm looking for is what robertson found so we all now know they exist.

The only question is which database is most comprehensive database for us.
And which geolocate batch will query that comprehensive database for us.

Ex: geolocate 123.123.123.123 => Paris, France
--
Please wear your mask!
Bugs are everywhere. :)
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\.'||'./
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/'..''..'\

Bugsy wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>
>> Are you trying to use a variety of free vpn/s; or are you using a
>> vpn service (often pay) which provides an 'array' of vpns to use,
>> your choice?
>
> The vpn services I use are all free and are a variety around the
> world. Even so, the question is more general than finding vpn in a
> certain city.
>>
>> As an example; proton vpn free provides 100 servers in 3 countries,
>> .us .jp .nl whereas proton pay provides 1700 servers in over 60
>> countries.
>>
>> And, one can choose which country one wants free or pay.
>
> The country is very often not enough granularity (see previous
> examples). What matters is only what location the company thinks your
> location is.
>
>> The parameters of other free/pay vpn/s have other varieties of
>> choices.
>
> If you want to watch some sports, even a state isn't enough
> granularity. The sports provider is likely using a similar geolocate
> to what you want.
>
>> I actually don't think your 'problem' is very difficult in one
>> sense; but on the other hand, some 'wiley' services which care
>> where the participant is located are also able to detect the very
>> condition of your using a vpn, particularly the free ones.
>
> That's not true in the situations that I've been testing out for
> years. I can easily do what I want to do using the web services I
> already listed.
>
Maybe you've been 'lucky' or doing OK so far, but the streaming services
enhance their defenses against what they consider 'misuse'.

I'm reading:

> Most streaming platforms keep a list of IP addresses belonging to
> known VPN services. This kind of blocking tends to be more effective
> against free VPNs or those with small networks

Naturally that is from a shill site which is trying to sell pay VPNs
which are
allegedly 'better' about not being blocked.

> Having trouble accessing geo-restricted services with a VPN? We’ll
> explain how services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer detect VPNs, and
> show you how to bypass VPN blocks for several major streaming sites.

> We are funded by our readers and may receive a commission when you
> buy using links on our site.

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/bypass-vpn-blocks/

--
Mike Easter

Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

> Maybe you've been 'lucky' or doing OK so far, but the streaming services
> enhance their defenses against what they consider 'misuse'.

It's not clear to me why you're adamantly against the command functionality
curl icanhazip.com => 123.123.123.123
geolocate 123.123.123.123 => Paris, France

>
> I'm reading:
>
>> Most streaming platforms keep a list of IP addresses belonging to
>> known VPN services. This kind of blocking tends to be more effective
>> against free VPNs or those with small networks

The web curl+geolocate method (see previous examples) already works
What I'm seeking is a curl+geolocate command line batch solution
For that I am currently testing some of the robertson suggestions

However you seem to be adamantly against any functionality to the level
that seems ridiculous given you seem to not want people to have command
line tools that do what the web based tools already do

>
> Naturally that is from a shill site which is trying to sell pay VPNs
> which are allegedly 'better' about not being blocked.

Almost all "vpn advice" on the net is from a site trying to sell vpn
Any advice from them always points to their proprietary vpn solution

>
>> Having trouble accessing geo-restricted services with a VPN? We'll
>> explain how services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer detect VPNs, and
>> show you how to bypass VPN blocks for several major streaming sites.
>
>> We are funded by our readers and may receive a commission when you
>> buy using links on our site.
>
> https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/bypass-vpn-blocks/

It's unknown to me why you're so ardently against batch functionality
curl icanhazip.com => 123.123.123.123
geolocate 123.123.123.123 => Paris, France

But it's clear you won't be able to help given your stated disposition

If there are others who aren't already wickedly against geofunctionality
like you seem to be, those are the people I'm trying to get advice from
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Mike Easter cited:
>>
> I'm reading:
>
>> Most streaming platforms keep a list of IP addresses belonging to
>> known VPN services. This kind of blocking tends to be more
>> effective against free VPNs or those with small networks
>
> Naturally that is from a shill site which is trying to sell pay VPNs
> which are allegedly 'better' about not being blocked.
>
If you don't want info from a shill site trying to sell you something,
try a wp article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN_blocking
> VPN blocking by online services

Another good thing about the wp article is the references which it
provides for further reading and education; in this case most of the
references are about country blocking rather than streamers.

--
Mike Easter

On 2022-11-04 22:02, Bugsy wrote:
> Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Maybe you've been 'lucky' or doing OK so far, but the streaming services
>> enhance their defenses against what they consider 'misuse'.
>
> It's not clear to me why you're adamantly against the command functionality
> curl icanhazip.com => 123.123.123.123
> geolocate 123.123.123.123 => Paris, France
>
>>
>> I'm reading:
>>
>>> Most streaming platforms keep a list of IP addresses belonging to
>>> known VPN services. This kind of blocking tends to be more effective
>>> against free VPNs or those with small networks
>
> The web curl+geolocate method (see previous examples) already works
> What I'm seeking is a curl+geolocate command line batch solution
> For that I am currently testing some of the robertson suggestions

What? Surely to combine those two commands in one batch or script file
is trivial.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Bugsy wrote:
> Mike Easter
>
>> Maybe you've been 'lucky' or doing OK so far, but the streaming services
>> enhance their defenses against what they consider 'misuse'.
>
> It's not clear to me why you're adamantly against the command functionality
> curl icanhazip.com => 123.123.123.123
> geolocate 123.123.123.123 => Paris, France
>
You misunderstand me.

My point is that I would expect 'various' streaming providers to know
you are trying to access them from a (free) VPN.

Your goal is to try to use free VPNs to access some streaming sites and
you are wanting to know how to figure out where your free vpn looks like.

I think it is just fine to use some command like curl + geolocate.
Using icanhazip as example, I've seen that site 'refuse' to provide an
IP to a vpn IP, so obviously a LOT of sites care about whether you are
vpn/ing or not.

> that seems ridiculous given you seem to not want people to have command
> line tools that do what the web based tools already do
>
You don't get it. Why would I care about that? I use command tools all
the time.
>>
>> Naturally that is from a shill site which is trying to sell pay VPNs
>> which are allegedly 'better' about not being blocked.
>
> Almost all "vpn advice" on the net is from a site trying to sell vpn
> Any advice from them always points to their proprietary vpn solution
>
That is what I just said.

--
Mike Easter

On Fri, 4 Nov 2022 11:16:22 -0500
Bugsy <bugsy@zimage.comBUGSY> wrote:

> Only recently Windows added the curl command so that we can use the command
> line to quickly report our current ip address (curl icanhazip.com) but what
> about a geolocate command line command to pinpoint its geographical origin?
>
> The well known web standins are whatismyipaddress.com (or equivalent) and
> geo-lookup.ifiy.org (or equivalent) but a browser has much more identifying
> baggage than a simple curl/whatever command would be while using a vpn.
>
> What's a freely available Windows command-line geolocate batch tool?
> --
There used to an addon (Lightxxx)for FF which showed the trace route of your request and its hops. It resolved as a name of a company not an ip, the hops could be understood that the server was located at the destination of your request. It is a good ideas to see which and how many points there are and how most of your traffic goes.

--
Nic <Nic@none.net>