Knowing users’ geolocations is beneficial for various purposes, including marketing, brand and customer protection, cybersecurity, fraud prevention, and regulatory compliance. But not all IP geolocation database downloads can give you the data you need to do those tasks. You may need one that provides comprehensive information, including the Internet Service Provider, time zone, and postal code. An example would be https://ip-geolocation.whoisxmlapi.com/database created and maintained by WhoisXML API.
This IP geolocation database download contains the geolocation details of 99.68% of the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in use. As such, it covers more than 300,000 unique locations spread across over 250 cities worldwide. Agreements with large Internet service providers (ISPs) allow WhoisXML API to collect the information. And since organizations have varied database requirements, the database and updates can be downloaded in two of the most widely used formats—comma-separated values (CSV) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
Knowing all that, what can you get out of an IP geolocation database download, though?
What Is an IP Geolocation Database?
An IP geolocation database download is a repository of the IP addresses organizations and individuals alike use no matter where they are in the world. An IP address, of course, serves as an Internet-connected device’s unique identifier.
The database contains an IP address’s corresponding country, time zone, region/state/province, city, postal code, latitude and longitude coordinates, ISP, Autonomous System (AS) number and organization, domain names, and more. These details can help you identify where employees, customers, and stakeholders are at the time they accessed your website or any connected system.
How Does an IP Geolocation Database Work?
Any network-connected device typically keeps traffic logs. All the domains and IP addresses that people in the organization communicate with are recorded in these logs. And all the IP addresses of the devices that access its web properties get stored in network logs as well.
However, users would not be able to obtain any insights on these IP addresses and the useful data behind them if they do not have an IP geolocation database download on hand. Such a database can provide geographical information on an IP address’s user. To better understand what you can do with it, we listed four of its benefits with examples in the next section.
Using an IP Geolocation Database Download: Benefits and Examples
As mentioned earlier, an IP geolocation database download can give pertinent information about any device user that communicates with your network given his/her IP address. The data is beneficial for marketers/advertisers, brand protection agents, cybersecurity professionals, and regulatory compliance officers.
Boost Marketing
An IP geolocation database download can help you get market demographics information. With it, you can discover emerging trends and opportunities that you have yet to tap.
You can, for instance, learn where most of your customers are coming from. That way, you can give them discounts as a thank you for patronizing your products.
Say, some of your best customers have IP addresses that point to Raleigh, North Carolina (e.g., 23[.]235[.]60[.]92). If you have a store there, you can give product/service users a 20% discount to show your appreciation. That could mean more satisfied customers, boosting their loyalty and, in the long run, possibly improve your sales.
Protect against Threats
Knowing where threats come from is half the battle. If you know that most spam emails come from China, for instance, you can configure your systems to give alerts each time an IP address from there communicates with your network. You can then check if it is malicious or not. You need to remember that not all Chinese IP addresses are malicious of course but if a specific address is, you can block it.
Integrating an IP geolocation database download into your firewall would tell you, for instance, that 152[.]136[.]157[.]234 is from Beijing, China. A check on AbuseIPDB would let you know that it is a malicious IP address and should be blocked.
Prevent Fraud
Since an IP geolocation database download tells you where users come from, it can help you tell if the person behind each transaction is who he/she claims to be.
If your organization only deals with people in the U.S., all of the IP addresses behind the transactions should be from the country. As such, when a transaction comes from a Mumbai, India IP address 103[.]211[.]219[.]226, it should be flagged. In this case, you might want to add another authentication step to verify the transaction. For instance, you can find the user's contact details and message the owner of the account currently trying to make a transaction before allowing it to push through. Only if the user confirms his/her identity and that he/she is in India and not at home (in the U.S.) should you approve the transaction.
By doing this simple verification step, you have avoided a possibly fraudulent transaction, which could put your customer and business at risk.
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The three uses of an IP geolocation database download above are just a few of the many that an IP geolocation database can help with. It is also beneficial for brand protection and regulatory compliance. Analyzing your users’ locations can allow you to increase your profit while helping you avoid costly threats.