[tbb-bugs] #23052 [Applications/Tor Browser]: I get Ukrainian IPs most of the time

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#23052: I get Ukrainian IPs most of the time
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 Reporter:  cypherpunks               |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect                    |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium                    |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                    |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                            |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by dcf):

 This phenomenon is possibly Google's geolocation being confused by the
 many Ukrainians that started using Tor recently. The IP addresses are not
 actually in Ukraine. Please see:

 [https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043269.html Is
 the recent growth in Ukrainian users confusing google's geoip?]
 > Motivated by a blog post comment:
 > https://blog.torproject.org/comment/269237#comment-269237
 >
 > It looks like a growing number of connections from Tor exits are being
 > treated by Google as being Ukrainian.
 >
 > Anecdotally, I've experienced it too -- Google news keeps wanting to
 > give me Ukrainian news.
 >
 > For those who haven't been paying attention, we got a jump in some
 > hundreds of thousands of .ua users recently:
 > https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-
 country.html?start=2017-05-01&end=2017-06-18&country=ua&events=off
 > and it looks like they're really users:
 > https://bugs.torproject.org/22369
 >
 > Here's my speculation:
 >
 > You know how Google's proprietary geoip system is typically better
 > than Maxmind's, because they data mine the heck out of their traffic,
 > for example by deciding that the google maps address you ask about most
 > is probably your home address?
 >
 > I wonder if a lot of ordinary people doing ordinary things via Tor,
 > and acting like people in the Ukraine, has tipped Google's sekrit-sauce
 > machine learning decision trees into labeling those IP addresses as
 > being in .ua.

 There are some other ideas later in the thread.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23052#comment:2>
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