Request for use case: GeoIP

[AramZS]

There is an interest in understanding how GeoIP is used and why, what are the use cases that are reflected by participants in this group. This would be highly relevant to a discussion around this in an IETF working group - https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/pearg/meetings/

And potentially here to our antifraud group in the W3C here - https://www.w3.org/community/antifraud/

What follows is our use case questions and we would like to see answers from all participants that can be collected into a use case.

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What is the use case?

Describe the use case in detail. What does it do?

Why is it important to preserve this use case?

Describe why this feature is critical to effective web advertising - both benefits to businesses as well as benefits to consumers.

How is it functionally achieved today?

Describe how this functionality is achieved today

[AramZS]

Please open issues on this repo with proposals and changes, especially of value is PRs with text additions - https://github.com/ShivanKaul/draft-ip-address-privacy/blob/main/draft-irtf-pearg-ip-address-privacy-considerations.md#rough-geolocation

[AramZS]

• We also want to update the Antifraud group on this

[AramZS]

Noting an explicit need for use cases on the basis of the questions of regulatory contradictions, especially in terms of privacy and how cache sharding might be dependent on that.

[AramZS]

Noting from Kris Chapman that there is a need, even when the user is not necessarily under a contradicting regime, to have geo-based decisions around storage and control.

[AramZS]

Noting a potential solution being discussed at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-geohash-hint-00 & https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-pauly-httpbis-geohash-hint/

[AramZS]

Noting that for ad targeting use cases, they usually want to resolve to DMA - Designated Market Area. Often zipcode-level data is needed for things like weather ads by region, or by anticipated travel. Some advertisers like insurance are dependent on state-level understandings (which is not covered by DMA because DMA can cross states)

[AramZS]

Another use case is about using lat/long to understand weather based on IP and target ads on that basis.

Another use case restricts the targeting to specific places because of some level of compliance.

There is also negative geofencing - where one might limit an ad on the basis of the geo - for example one doesn't want to show cigarette ads to IPs coming from schools.

[wseltzer]

Discussed 1 March https://www.w3.org/2022/03/01-web-adv-minutes.html#t02