Set default country according to IP

[swaldman]

Title:
Set default country according to IP

Area:
Shop

Summary:
When making purchases in the shop, it would be nifty if your country could be defaulted to a best guess based on IP.

Description:
It would be a minor convenience feature, and might involve quite a lot of work/hassle/complexity... but I thought I'd throw it out there in case somebody says "oh, that'd be easy actually" :-)

Drawbacks: Slowdown as the lookup is done; don't know whether this would be significant. Maybe there are some situations in which people would be offended by an incorrect guess?

Poll #13460 Set default country according to IP

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
6 (13.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
23 (50.0%)

(I have no opinion)
16 (34.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[swaldman]

Just curious - to all the people voting "shouldn't be implemented" - why not?

(and also to the one who's voted "Other (please comment)" without a comment, but maybe that's coming :-)

[denise]

i can't speak for others for sure, but my guess is that most people find geolocation-by-IP really creepy and intrusive.

(or find that it's usually wrong like a wrong thing with wrongsauce, but that's more on the state level. mine usually thinks i'm somewhere in virginia, for instance, instead of MD.)

[kaberett]

I travel internationally enough that it would probably inconvenience me more than it would help. I am aware that I am probably not typical in this respect. :-p

[killing_rose]

Facebook is convinced my entire household lives in Maryland off of IP addresses, which, as you know, is massively incorrect.

[matgb]

At least Virginia and Maryland are close to each other, my old dial up ISP used to always put me the other side of the country-I knew why, but it was daft.

However...

Geolocation is something that some people are freaked out by, but it's something you as the site are basically doing anyway, if you're on the shop page you're on a site schemed page ergo analytics are on. It's just aggregate data.

If we don't like to encourage privacy by obscurity, why intentionally pretend to people we can't work out where they are just to make them feel a bit better? For those of us in a non-US country, this would be a simple improvement with few drawbacks (obvs, US resident international travellers would then need to click something they don't currently but I'm guessing that's a smaller proportion than non-US residents).

I, personally, am not that bothered, especially if the suggestion to add the UK to the top of the list is implemented, but the argument against of "it's a bit creepy" is basically the same as "if I pretend it's not happening I don't know about it", which isn't good practice for users that are concerned about this stuff.

[swaldman]

To be fair, AIUI Analytics does only provide aggregate data - AFAIK Dreamwidth doesn't look up location for specific individuals. Although, as covered elsewhere, in this particular case the individuals have to tell Dreamwidth where they are anyway!

[kyrielle]

I have no opinion either way, but there are also a decent group of people (using firewalls/bouncers to access sites their country might not allow, or to anonymize themselves) for whom this would always be wrong. I have no idea if any of them use Dreamwidth or are voting here, though.

[aedifica]

If we don't like to encourage privacy by obscurity, why intentionally pretend to people we can't work out where they are just to make them feel a bit better?

Because we want people to give Dreamwidth money, and not get freaked out by privacy concerns while they're on the payment page about to do so. :-)

[arethinn]

When we briefly had MetroFi in my area, geolocation seemed to think I was in New Jersey. I am in California (and thisclose to where Google was doing the same thing over in Mountain View, with I think more lasting success). Never figured out how that one worked.

[killing_rose]

I find geolocation creepy as all hells and I do not want someone to pinpoint which country I'm in based off it. I would be even more wary were it to go down to state/territory/county, etc. I mean, I'm more open than I used to be about who i am/where to find me, but. No. I really do not want that to be a default setting in the shop.

[swaldman]

Thank you.
This explanation confuses me a little, since you have to tell the shop where you are anyway, but I respect that it's how you (and presumably others) feel, and it gives me a little more insight into why people are voting against :-)

[killing_rose]

I know several folks who set their default country as something other than the one they actually reside in, or they hide where they live completely. There are a variety of reasons for that--privacy, RP, a stalker they're avoiding, whatever.

The address tied to the form of payment might also not be yours--I've got others I know who aren't the ones who actually buy the points for dw usage, and thus were you to go off of the one whose address is on the payment, the address will be incorrect. (You specifically say IP geolocation, which shouldn't be impacted by this? But it's early and I'm exhausted.)

[swaldman]

Um, the suggestion was for the country in your address in the shop (ie for the payment) to be guessed at. I am not suggesting this for the location given in the account's profile.

The country in the shop must be the same as on your credit card, as otherwise you will not be able to pay, hence my confusion - it's information that you have to provide anyway, so all this would do is save you a click or two.

But unless there is actually misunderstanding here, I'm not trying to say "you are wrong to be creeped out by this" - and if lots of people are creeped out by it then we probably shouldn't do it - I'm just trying to understand the reasons.

[killing_rose]

...I still find geolocation creepy as all hells, but yes, you're correct, I misunderstood the suggestion.

[azurelunatic]

Current physical location and address location of payment method aren't necessarily congruent. Particularly if it's the address location associated with a prepaid card.

[swaldman]

True - although I imagine a different country is probably quite rare - but surely it's a good start? (if it's right for only half of people, that's still half of people who don't have to set their country, with no detriment to the rest)

[matgb]

Observation: It defaults to the US, over 90% of payments are from US based payment methods, if it starts detecting things, it's going to mean people currently not having to select will have to do so.

90%+ currently don't need to select their country, there's a chance your proposed change will make several of them start to have to do so, but we don't know how many.

[swaldman]

It defaults to blank, not to US.

Maybe that's a good argument to say that it *should* default to US, but it would probably annoy a lot of non-USians.

[matgb]

Ah, I'm misremembering then, in which case yeah, everyone has to select a country, if it selects the wrong country fixing it is easy.

OTOH, if it defaults to blank, people are forced to change it, if it's not blank people might not always check it's correct and errors happen, invalid cards, etc. No idea if that's a major concern-I'm going to vote for this as I think it's a good idea, but I can see there are problems with it, although some of the objections make less sense to me for above stated reasons.

[denise]

it's weird to you, but for most people, there's a big difference between "I choose to give you my information" and "auuuugh the site already knows shit about me". :)

[deborah]

it's like how when companies (in general) first started setting up call-center software that would automatically pull up caller ID-customer information on received calls, they would make it so that when you called up the customer service center, the customer support representative would answer the phone "Hello, Denise!"

And they realized people got INCREDIBLY creeped out about it and they stopped, even though as soon as you called from your home phone they knew perfectly well who you were and actually it saved time; when they were just saying "Hello, Denise," they were cutting out all that tedious "and could you spell your name" that they didn't actually need because of the caller ID tie-ins to the software.

It's a psychological thing.

[pauamma]

I don't have a CC, so am unlikely to use the DW store anyway, and as such I don't have an opinion either way.

[cesy]

I can understand why others don't like it, but this would save me a click and not bother me.